Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Constructs

The development of two multidimensional perfectionism measures at the start of the 1990’s facilitated exponential growth in research on perfectionism. Until then, perfectionism had been assessed with unidimensional measures. The Burns Perfectionism Scale came from the depression literature and assessed dysfunctional perfectionistic attitudes (Burns, 1980) and perfectionism was assessed in the eating disorder context with the sixitem perfectionism subscale from the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI; Garner, Olmstead, & Polivy, 1983). We now know, over two decades later, that perfectionism is a multidimensional construct and there is a much better understanding of this complex personality orientation. There is increasing evidence that perfectionism is associated with consequential outcomes, in keeping with demonstrations of how personality contributes to consequential life outcomes that matter (see Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006). One of the clearest illustrations is the apparent role played by trait perfectionism dimensions in early mortality (see Fry & Debats, 2009). This link between perfectionism and early mortality has provided the impetus for a thriving line of investigation on the role of perfectionism in health problems. While it is clear that perfectionism is related to the five-factor model (see Hill, McIntire, & Bacharach, 1997), it is also evident both conceptually and empirically that perfectionism has unique elements that distinguish it from broad traits such as conscientiousness and neuroticism. We have argued repeatedly, for instance, that extreme self-oriented perfectionism is a form of hyper-conscientiousness that goes beyond normal conscientiousness because it is a compulsive form of needing things and the self to be perfect and exact. Similarly, the concept of socially prescribed perfectionism incorporates the emotional instability that is the essence of trait neuroticism, but there are unique elements associated with feeling like others or society in general has imposed unfair demands on the self to be perfect. The vast array of measures of perfectionism posed a particular problem for us in writing this chapter. We limited our scope by focusing on the most widely used measures while acknowledging that there are other suitable measures that merit consideration depending on the particular interests of the potential user. The measures reviewed in this chapter were selected on the basis of several criteria. First, and foremost, they had to be measures that are used broadly and this use extends substantially beyond the lab where the measures were created. Second, in order to address the psychometric themes covered in this and other chapters in this book, extensive information about the instrument had to be available. Several intriguing new measures have emerged in the past several years but we simply need more information about them. Finally, the decision to exclude some measures was based, in part, on unresolved issues that remain to be addressed. Two particular examples come to mind here. First, a measure of clinical perfectionism based on a unidimensional framework appears to actually consist of more than one factor (see Dickie, Surgenor, Wilson, & McDowall, 2012). As another example, a measure of positive perfectionism (reflecting ‘good perfectionism’) and negative perfectionism (reflecting ‘bad perfectionism’) was used in a recent study involving a clinical sample of anxious and depressed people. Egan, Piek, Dyck, and Kane (2011) found that positive ‘good’ perfectionism was robustly correlated with greater depression (r5 .50) in the clinical group. Their results point to the possibility that perhaps positive perfectionism can be functional at one point in someone’s life but it can be quite negative when clinical dysfunction is evident or