Perfectionism and the Big Five 2

Findings from cross-sectional studies on the relationship between perfectionism and the Big Five personality traits demonstrate that conscientiousness shows significant positive correlations with self-oriented perfectionism, and neuroticism with socially prescribed perfectionism. The question is whether conscientiousness and neuroticism also predict longitudinal changes in self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism. A sample of 214 adolescents aged 14-19 years completed measures of the Big Five and perfectionism twice over a period of 5 to 8 months. As was expected, conscientiousness predicted longitudinal increases in self-oriented perfectionism. Neuroticism, however, did not predict any longitudinal increases in perfectionism—neither in self-oriented nor in socially prescribed perfectionism. Providing support for McCrae and Costa’s dynamic personality theory (McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. [1999]. A five-factor theory of personality. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John [Eds.], Handbook of personality [2nd ed., pp. 139-153]. New York: Guilford) which holds that broad personality traits play a part in the development of lower-level personality characteristics, the findings suggest that conscientiousness is a trait that plays a role in the development of selforiented perfectionism.