Ah, the start of teaching. Fresh, yet-to-be-jaded faces waiting outside the lecture theatre 10 minutes before the scheduled start of class. That may not last, at least not for everybody.
I predict the ones who do continue to arrive early for class will be perfectionists. Perfectionism seems to help some folk during the first year. There are two types: adaptive perfectionism, characterised by having high personal standards and a penchant for organisation, and maladaptive perfectionism, or the pressure to live up to other’s expectations and a penchant to second-guess everything you do. But the wheels fall off when the pressure’s on and the assignments come non-stop, overwhelming your ability to produce perfection every time.
My 2023 adult community survey allows me to classify people into different types of perfectionism. More than half of you are “adaptive” perfectionists and, fortunately, only a quarter are “maladaptive” perfectionists.
The adaptive perfectionists also describe their personalities as more conscientious, report slightly higher educational qualifications and also higher income. Which all sounds good. Maladaptive perfectionists also report more education and income, but only a little more. They also, paradoxically, say they’re less conscientious than average.
Maladaptive perfectionism doesn’t just sound bad – I mean, who wants to worry about other people evaluating them all the time and doing things over and over to try to be perfect? But it has psychological consequences. Maladaptive perfectionists are also more likely to report eating disorders, nightmares, anxiety and depression.
But the reality is, any kind of perfectionism may be problematic. In the survey, adaptive perfectionists were also more likely to report these distressing experiences, just not as strongly.
Why? For a start, you can be both. In fact, one-third of you are double-perfectionists – endorsing high standards and a need for tidiness and internalised expectations of others, pre-occupation with mistakes, etc.
Western research on perfectionism tends to focus heavily on mum, dad and teachers as the sources of these expectations. But my colleague, Ellie Rukuwai, has argued this is too narrow – we should consider not just broader popular culture, but also cultural context.
My former PhD student, Maddy Brocklesby, led a longitudinal programme of perfectionism research with secondary school age students, and that research hints at the interplay between the two flavours of perfectionism. In that research, maladaptive perfectionism predicted future psychological distress, but adaptive perfectionism didn’t. But adaptive perfectionism predicted future maladaptive perfectionism; it can be a gateway.
Here’s how I think this goes:
Child: “Dad, my hard work paid off, ‘cos I got an excellence for my assignment!”
Dad: “That’s awesome! I’m so proud of you. Now you just need to get excellences for the rest of the year …”
And who wouldn’t do this? Of course parents and teachers want their young people to do well. Dad doesn’t think he’s setting up a potentially paralysing anxiety over making the child proud through a never-ending list of future excellences.
The solution isn’t to stop being proud or encouraging our young people. It’s the way we encourage them that’s important. Mum can commend the hard work of their child, rather than “just” the outcome, and I think we can be more careful about how we frame our expectations.
It isn’t easy being a parent, but it can be really tough being a child and perfectionist kids turn into perfectionist adults.
This is part of a series of columns that draw from a large nationwide survey I conducted in late 2023, and that more than 5000 took part in. I couldn’t do this without their time.
