preview

Perfectionism As A Dynamic And Multifaceted Personality Trait

Good Essays

Introduction Perfectionism has been in a centre of attention of sport psychologists for last few decades and even though a ‘research boom’ already provided many interesting findings, the topic offers plenty of other areas to investigate. Number of different ways in which perfectionism is conceptualized and measured is one of the biggest challenges when designing research in this field (Hill, Appleton & Hall, 2014). Nevertheless, when going through various sources, we can see a common point of view among researches looking at perfectionism as a multidimensional and multifaceted personality trait characterized by imposing high standards on oneself with the tendency to engage in overly and unrealistic critical evaluations of one’s achievement (Cumming & Duda, 2012; Flett & Hewitt, 2002). Individual’s need for flawlessness (perfection) and setting of excessively high standards of performance accompanied by tendencies for extremely critical evaluation of one’s performance are the core of this phenomenon (Stoeber & Otto, 2006). In general population, perfectionism is usually perceived as a negative psychological phenomenon leading to other unfavourable results (e.g. experiencing high level of stress). This extremely polarized attitude used to be also kept by many researchers connecting perfectionism with psychopathology outcomes. For a long time, one-dimensional concept of perfectionism dominated whole research area. Later on, two basic approaches to conceptualize the

Get Access