Perfectionism and Daily Stress, Coping, and Well-Being: Testing an Explanatory Feedback Intervention

1. Rationale for Study. Over the past three decades, perfectionism has received increasing theoretical and empirical attention as a cognitive-personality factor that increases vulnerability to several psychological problems, including depression and anxiety. In Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, young adults are experiencing higher levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation as well as significantly higher levels of self-critical perfectionism than a decade ago. Although the self-criticism (SC) dimension of perfectionism has been consistently associated with lower well-being, little longitudinal research has examined the mechanisms through which SC is related to well-being over time.

1.a. Perfectionism Dimensions and Daily Stress Reactivity and Coping (In)effectiveness.

Previous longitudinal studies of university students, community adults, and depressed patients have used 7-day and 14-day daily diary designs to obtain several assessments of appraisals, coping, and affect for each individual in the individual's natural everyday environments. Based on the Perfectionism Coping Processes Model (PCPM), multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM)/SEM between-persons results have demonstrated that SC perfectionists maintain lower well-being (e.g., negative affect, lower positive affect) over time because these individuals have a tendency to: (a) generate daily stress for themselves by magnifying the negative aspects of events such that mundane difficulties can be interpreted as threatening stressors; (b) engage in avoidant coping, which stems from helplessness thinking that the individual is unable to cope with stressors to the individual's own and others' satisfaction; and (c) perceive that others are unwilling or unavailable to help the individual in times of stress, and thereby lack an important resource (i.e., perceived social support) to make stressors seem less overwhelming. On the other hand, the adaptive potential of PS has been exhibited by an indirect relation with positive affect through maintenance of higher daily problem-focused coping when individuals with higher PS are not depressed. MSEM within-person results have shown that several distinct appraisals (e.g., event stress) and coping strategies (e.g., avoidant coping) commonly operate together across many different stressors when the typical individual experiences daily increases in negative affect and drops in positive affect. In parallel, constructive social (e.g., perceived social support) and self (e.g., perceived control) appraisals and engagement coping strategies (e.g., positive reinterpretation, problem-focused coping) commonly facilitate one another, which is linked to within-person increases in daily positive affect for the typical individual.

1.b. Perfectionism Dimensions and Daily Emotion (Dys)regulation. Given the pervasive and enduring stress management problems that generate persistent distress for perfectionistic individuals, it is important to better understand how certain emotion regulation strategies might make emotional reactions worse or serve a protective role. A recent SSHRC-funded study extends this previous research by using 14-day daily diaries and MSEM/multilevel modeling to examine the impact of SC and PS dimensions of perfectionism on emotion regulation (e.g., mindfulness, self-compassion, experiential avoidance, rumination) and well-being in a sample of 154 community adults over two years. Based on the Perfectionism and Emotion Regulation Processes Model (PERPM), MSEM between-persons results demonstrated that SC perfectionism maintains higher negative affect and lower positive affect over 14 days because these individuals have a tendency to generate daily stress for themselves and engage in experiential avoidance and rumination, and tend less to engage in mindfulness, self-compassion, and reappraisal. Within-person mediation results showed that, when the typical individual perceives more stress than usual, the individual responds with less mindfulness, self-compassion, and reappraisal than usual, and engages in more experiential avoidance and rumination than usual, and this was connected to decreases in daily well-being. Further, multilevel modeling results demonstrated that individuals with higher SC perfectionism, relative to those with lower SC, experience stronger within-person decreases in well-being (e.g., higher negative affect, lower positive affect) when the individual reports more stress than usual, and less self-compassion and mindfulness than usual.

1. c. Feedback Interventions for Perfectionists. Although mediators and moderators of the link between perfectionism and well-being have been identified, the direct clinical utility of these findings has not been a focus. Few studies have involved participants in a role beyond the completion of study questionnaires/diaries. An exception was a study in which a total of 60 young adults assessed to be maladaptive perfectionists were randomized to a control group or a single-session feedback intervention in which the participant's perfectionism results were discussed. Findings revealed that providing feedback to maladaptive perfectionists about the individual's perfectionism reduced self-reported global symptomatic distress as well as emotional reactivity. Although the findings suggest that a brief, individualized feedback intervention is effective, one important limitation of extant studies employing feedback interventions is that the feedback did not describe the actions to be taken to make change. According to feedback intervention theory and the model of actionable feedback, feedback will have an optimal effect on performance when information is focused on helping the recipient see how his/her behaviour should change to improve functioning. This entails customizability of feedback that engages the individual with his/her own data, making him/her an active participant in the sense-making process, rather than a passive recipient of information.