Middle and high school students in South Korea carry a heavy burden of exceeding pressure due to the cultural expectations of high academic achievement (Lee et al., 2010). In Korea, it is commonly perceived that the successful future and higher social status in life is determined primarily by entering a prestigious university (Yang, Kim, Patel, & Lee, 2005). This fosters excessive competition among students and their parents, which results in students’ experiencing severe academic stress (Lee et al., 2010). It is no surprise that academic stress is one of the strongest stressors for Korean students (Hwang, 2006 and Lee and Kim, 1996), and consequently, these students may experience symptoms of academic burnout.
Burnout syndrome was initially used to indicate chronic work stress among certain service providers (Maslach & Schaufeli, 1993). Three syndromes of burnout were identified by Maslach and Jackson (1981): emotional exhaustion referring to loss of energy and physical or emotional depletion; depersonalization or cynicism indicating lack of empathy; and reduced personal accomplishment meaning a sense of incompetence. This concept of burnout has expanded over time, and currently is used not only in other job settings, but also among students (Bakker et al., 2002, Demerouti et al., 2001 and Leiter and Schaufeli, 1996). Academic burnout consists of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and academic inefficacy that are experienced by students in academic settings due to chronic stress (Schaufeli, Martez, Marques-Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker, 2002). Emotional exhaustion refers to the depletion of energy due to academic demands; cynicism indicates apathetic and disinterested attitude toward given tasks; and inefficacy implies being incapable of producing desirable academic achievements (Shin, Puig, Lee, Lee, & Lee, 2011).
A number of studies have identified the psychological variables that lead to academic burnout with perfectionism being one of them. Perfectionism is a personality trait that has been recognized as a multidimensional construct (Miquelon, Vallerand, Cardinal, & Grouzet, 2005). Hewitt and Flett (1991) distinguished the dimensions of perfectionism into three: self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism. Simply put, self-oriented perfectionism can be described as setting high expectations and goals for oneself, whereas other-oriented perfectionism involves expecting others to be perfect and constantly evaluating them (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The third dimension, socially prescribed perfectionism, is related to striving to meet the expectations that are prescribed by significant others as well as trying to avoid their disapproval (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). Among these three dimensions, only self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism are considered in this research because these two indicate perfectionistic expectations on an individual rather than on others (Chang and Rand, 2000 and Miquelon et al., 2005).
There are numerous studies that conceptually distinguish adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism: adaptive perfectionism has association with striving for achievement and positive affect, whereas maladaptive perfectionism is related to concerns regarding evaluation and negative affect (Chang et al., 2004, Enns et al., 2002, Enns et al., 2001 and Frost et al., 1993). According to Klibert, Langhinrichsen-Rohling, and Saito (2005), self-oriented perfectionism is viewed as more adaptive because it is positively associated with adaptive constructs such as self-control and achievement motivation, while socially prescribed perfectionism is more maladaptive with relation to constructs such as depression, anxiety, shame, and guilt. Other studies also indicate that socially prescribed perfectionism results in negative psychological adjustments because the expectations imposed by significant others are perceived as excessive or uncontrollable (Chang and Rand, 2000, Hewitt and Flett, 1991 and Miquelon et al., 2005). On the other hand, self-oriented perfectionism does not always lead to negative consequences. Although self-oriented perfectionism can be associated with self-criticism and self-blame (Hewitt & Flett, 1991), there is evidence that it results in positive psychological adjustments (Flett et al., 1994, Frost et al., 1993, Hill et al., 1997 and Mills and Blankstein, 2000). Thus, self-oriented perfectionism is considered a more adaptive perfectionism while socially prescribed perfectionism is considered maladaptive (Klibert et al., 2005 and Miquelon et al., 2005).
Applying this dichotomy in academic settings, self-oriented perfectionism is closely related to academic engagement, whereas socially prescribed perfectionism to academic burnout (Jo & Lee, 2010). While maladaptive perfectionism may cause students to set unrealistic goals and force themselves to perform in an exceedingly competitive manner, thus eventually leading to academic burnout (Shim, 1995), adaptive perfectionism can facilitate motivation and increase the level of performance (Jo & Lee, 2010). However, not much research has been conducted on how and by which path perfectionistic traits influence academic burnout; moreover, it would be important to consider other psychological variables that function as mediators.
In this article, motivation is considered as another key factor in understanding the relation between perfectionistic traits and academic burnout. According to the self-determination theory, motivation can largely be divided into intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Intrinsic motivation refers to the inherent tendency to venture into the world for one’s own enjoyment, whereas amotivation indicates one’s unwillingness to act. Extrinsic motivation is the act of attaining separable outcomes based on social pressure and norms; it consists of different degrees of self-determination and autonomy, ranging from external regulation to introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). However, in this study, only the extreme ends of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation types were considered because the four types of motivation, namely intrinsic, identified, introjected, and external, are highly correlated (e.g., Stoeber, Feast, & Hayward, 2009).
Theoretically, and by definition, self-oriented perfectionism is associated with intrinsic motivation and socially prescribed perfectionism with extrinsic motivation (Hewitt and Flett, 1991, Miquelon et al., 2005 and Stoeber et al., 2009). However, there is not much research on the relation between the types of perfectionism and intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Miquelon et al. (2005) found that self-oriented perfectionism was related to intrinsic and internalized reasons for studying, and this result was supported by Stoeber et al. (2009). Socially prescribed perfectionism, on the other hand, was found to be positively related with extrinsic motivation to study (Miquelon et al., 2005 and Stoeber et al., 2009).
The aim of the current study is to examine the relations between the two different dimensions of perfectionistic traits, that is, self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism, and academic burnout which embrace exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. Next, the mediating role of two motivation types, namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, on the relations between the two different dimensions of perfectionistic traits and academic burnout were examined. As aforementioned, the relation between perfectionism and academic burnout has been shown in different studies (e.g., Jo & Lee, 2010). Also, there are studies showing relations between motivation and burnout (e.g., Cresswell & Eklund, 2005). However, few studies have been conducted to explain how perfectionistic traits influence academic burnout. It is hypothesized that intrinsic motivation would mediate the negative relation between self-oriented perfectionism and academic burnout, whereas extrinsic motivation would mediate the positive relation between socially prescribed perfectionism and academic burnout.
3. Results
The means, standard deviations, and correlations among the research variables were shown in Table 1. As expected, intrinsic motivation has positively significant relation with self-oriented perfectionism (r = 32, p < .01) but not with socially prescribed perfectionism. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation has positive relation with socially prescribed perfectionism (r = .26, p < .01), but no relation with self-oriented perfectionism was found. Regarding academic burnout, it showed positive correlation with extrinsic motivation (r = .36, p < .01) and socially prescribed perfectionism (r = .16, p < .01), but negative correlation with intrinsic motivation (r = −.37, p < .01) and self-oriented perfectionism (r = −.31, p < .01). These results mean that when the scores of extrinsic motivation and socially prescribed perfectionism increased, the level of academic burnout also ascended. Meanwhile, the higher level of internal motivation and self-oriented perfectionism was related to lower level of academic burnout.
Table 1.
The means, standard deviations and correlation among academic burnout, motivation and perfectionism.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Burnout 2.82 .56 –
2. Intrinsic motivation 2.94 1.03 −.37⁎⁎ –
3. Extrinsic motivation 2.23 .93 .36⁎⁎ .15⁎ –
4. Self-oriented perfectionism 4.34 .79 −.31⁎⁎ .32⁎⁎ −.00 –
5. Socially prescribed perfectionism 4.05 .55 .16⁎⁎ .10 .26⁎⁎ .41⁎⁎ –
⁎
p < .05.
⁎⁎
p < .01.
Table options
Figure 1 shows the mediation model with intrinsic motivation mediating the relation between self-oriented perfectionism and academic burnout. There was a significant total effect of self-oriented perfectionism and academic burnout (t = −5.53, p < .001; c path). Based on unstandardized regression coefficients, there was a significant effect of self-oriented perfectionism on intrinsic motivation (t = 5.68, p < .001; a path) and intrinsic motivation on academic burnout (t = −5.25, p < .001; b path). The indirect effect was significant because the bootstrapped 95% confidence interval did not contain zero (−.12, −.04). However, the effect of self-oriented perfectionism on burnout was still significant when the effect of intrinsic motivation was controlled (t = −3.80, p < .001; c’ path), suggesting partial mediation.
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Fig. 1.
Mediation model with intrinsic motivation mediating the relation between self-oriented perfectionism and academic burnout.
Figure options
The result of mediation model with extrinsic motivation mediating the relation between socially prescribed perfectionism and academic burnout was shown in Fig. 2. Total effect of socially prescribed perfectionism on academic burnout was significant (t = 2.72, p < .01; c path). Also the effects of socially prescribed perfectionism on extrinsic motivation (t = 4.43, p < .001; a path) and extrinsic motivation on burnout (t = 5.85, p < .001; b path) were significant. Furthermore, the indirect effect of socially prescribed perfectionism on academic burnout through extrinsic motivation had a 95% confidence interval between .05 and .15, indicating a significant mediation effect. The main effect of socially prescribed perfectionism on academic burnout became non-significant after controlling the effect of extrinsic motivation (t = 1.28, p = .20; c’ path). It means that the extrinsic motivation fully mediated the relation between socially prescribed perfectionism and academic burnout.
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Fig. 2.
Mediation model with extrinsic motivation mediating the relation between socially prescribed perfectionism and academic burnout.
