Validation of a measure of perfectionism

This article describes perfectionism, or the holding of and striving for unrealistically high standards, and presents two studies undertaken to investigate the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Perfectionism Scale (PS; Burns, 1980). College students in the first study completed the PS, several other measures of high standards, and measures of constructs that, conceptually, are differentially related to perfectionism. Correlational analyses indicated that the Perfectionism Scale has convergent and discriminant validity and seems to measure self-oriented perfectionism. The second study attempted to determine the predictive validity of the PS by testing a vulnerability model of subclinical depression outlined in Hewitt and Dyck (1986). PS scores were used to predict depressed mood changes in female college students following failure on important and unimportant tasks. As expected, the results indicated that perfectionism interacted with failure on important versus unimportant tasks to produce dysphoric mood. Evidence for the predictive validity of the PS was thus shown. Several directions for future research are discussed.