بررسی ویژگی دامنه کمال گرایی در میان بین دانش آموزان ورزشکار

There is currently disagreement among perfectionism theorists as to whether the personality trait of perfectionism should be conceptualized and measured as a global personality construct or as a domain-specific construct. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if perfectionism levels varied as a function of the situational context within which perfectionist tendencies were considered. A total of 133 male (M age = 21.59 years, SD = 2.32) and 108 female (M age = 21.44 years, SD = 2.68) intercollegiate student-athletes participated in the study. Respondents completed three self-report instruments designed to measure global perfectionist tendencies, and perfectionist tendencies in the achievement domains of sport and academe. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance revealed that perfectionism levels varied significantly for both males and females as a function of the situational context within which perfectionist tendencies were examined. Moreover, male participants tended to have higher perfectionist tendencies than female participants in the sport domain. The results suggest that individual differences in perfectionism can be attributed to the situational context of the achievement domains that respondents are asked to consider when judging their perfectionist tendencies. A move towards the domain specific assessment of perfectionism is advocated.

Perfectionism and its constituent components have been associated with numerous adaptive and maladaptive correlates in a variety of performance settings including (a) positive and negative affect in academic test situations (Bieling, Israeli, Smith, & Antony, 2003), (b) excellence (Gould, Dieffenbach, & Moffett, 2002) and burnout (Gould, Udry, Tuffey, & Loehr, 1996) in sport, (c) anxiety in performing arts (Mor, Day, Flett, & Hewitt, 1995), (d) stress in the workplace (Flett, Hewitt, & Hallett, 1995), and (e) lowered sexual satisfaction in intimate relationships (Habke, Hewitt, & Flett, 1999). Certain aspects of perfectionism have also been linked to a host of other psychosocial difficulties and psychopathological symptoms ranging from loneliness and low self-esteem to depression and suicidal tendencies (see Enns & Cox, 2002, for a review). Clearly, there is a need to understand the cognitive, affective, and behavioral implications of perfectionist orientations in performance settings (Flett & Hewitt, 2002). Perfectionism has been generally conceptualized as an enduring stable personality trait (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). Although no single definition of perfectionism has been agreed upon by perfectionism researchers (Flett & Hewitt, 2002), a fundamental characteristic of perfectionism that is universally recognized by theorists is the tendency to set extremely high standards of personal performance (e.g., Burns, 1980, Hamachek, 1978 and Pacht, 1984). Prominent perfectionism theorists (e.g., Frost et al., 1990 and Hewitt and Flett, 1991) view perfectionism as a multidimensional construct that is comprised of both intrapersonal and interpersonal components (Blatt, 1995). Intrapersonal perfectionism reflects the extent to which people make stringent self-referenced judgments about the attainment of their own high personal performance or behavioral standards. Interpersonal perfectionism reflects the extent to which people feel that they (a) experience pressure to reach other people’s high standards, (b) are judged harshly by others with respect to the achievement of high personal behavioral or performance standards, and/or (c) judge others with respect to the high behavioral or performance standards that they expect others to meet. The two most widely used measures of multidimensional perfectionism (Enns & Cox, 2002) are the similarly named Multidimensional Perfectionism Scales (MPS) that were developed independently by Frost et al. (1990, Frost-MPS) and Hewitt and Flett (1991, Hewitt-MPS). Both instruments conceptualize and assess perfectionism as a global or general personality trait. However, very little empirical research has been conducted to determine if perfectionism should indeed be conceptualized as a global personality trait that generalizes across situational contexts, or whether it should be conceptualized (and measured) as a domain-specific construct (Flett and Hewitt, 2002 and Slaney et al., 2002). This seems to be a particularly important issue to resolve because some perfectionism theorists (e.g., Frost et al., 1990, Hewitt and Flett, 1991 and Hewitt et al., 2003) view perfectionism as a trait that generalizes across life domains, whereas other perfectionism theorists (e.g., Missildine, 1963, Shafran et al., 2002 and Shafran et al., 2003) argue that perfectionism may only apply in select areas of people’s lives. Moreover, research into other trait constructs (e.g., trait anxiety) has shown that domain-specific measures are generally more effective at predicting behavior within their respective domains (e.g., test anxiety, public speaking anxiety, competitive anxiety) than global measures (see Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990). Results of several studies shed some light on the generalizability issue surrounding perfectionism. Saboonchi and Lundh (1999) measured perfectionist thinking among 88 Swedish undergraduates in a problem-solving context (memory and card-sorting tasks) and an interpersonal context (meeting a stranger). Bivariate correlations on the five variables that were used to measure perfectionist thinking ranged from .14 to .30, suggesting that the cross-situational stability of perfectionism was relatively weak. Mitchelson and Burns (1998) examined perfectionist orientations among a sample of 67 career mothers—defined as married mothers who worked at least 25 h/week and who put their children in daycare while at work. Mitchelson and Burns gave participants two modified versions of the Hewitt-MPS (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The two versions were modified to make respondents consider their perfectionist tendencies in the context of their home life and their work life. Results showed that, on average, career mothers reported significantly higher perfectionist tendencies at work than at home across all three subscales of the instrument. Further evidence supporting the domain specificity of perfectionism was reported in a qualitative study by Slaney and Ashby (1996) who interviewed 32 self-professed perfectionists and five additional people who had been designated by others as perfectionists. Participants were 16 men and 21 women (M age = 28.37 years), the majority of whom were university students and faculty members. Participants were asked if they considered themselves to be perfectionists. Of the 37 respondents, almost one third (i.e., 7 men and 5 women) qualified their affirmative responses by stating that their perfectionist tendencies only “applied to specific areas of their lives but not all areas” ( Slaney & Ashby, 1996, p. 395). These types of conditional hedges are not uncommon in personality research (see Wright & Mischel, 1988), and underscore Weiner’s (1990) position that the difficulty of measuring and understanding motivational trait concepts (such as perfectionism) “is the lack of cross-situational generality” (p. 621). Thus, the importance of considering the situational conditions within which perfectionist tendencies may or may not operate is reinforced. To this end, numerous perfectionism researchers (e.g., Flett and Hewitt, 2002, Mitchelson and Burns, 1998, Rice and Mirzadeh, 2000, Saboonchi and Lundh, 1999 and Slaney et al., 2002) have called for more empirical studies to determine if there is value in conceptualizing and measuring perfectionism as a domain-specific construct as opposed to a more global construct. The purpose of the present study was to determine if multidimensional perfectionism levels vary as a function of the situational context within which perfectionist tendencies are considered. More specifically, we examined intercollegiate student-athletes’ levels of global perfectionism (using the Hewitt-MPS) and their corresponding levels of perfectionism in two specific achievement domains: namely, sport and academe. These two achievement domains were selected because numerous researchers have either examined, or spoken to the usefulness of examining, the cross-situational consistency of motivational constructs in competitive sport and classroom/academic settings (e.g., Duda and Nicholls, 1992, Eccles and Harold, 1991 and Weiner, 1990). Given the previously mentioned conflicting views among perfectionism theorists about the cross-situational consistency of perfectionist tendencies, the present study was considered to be exploratory in nature. Consequently, no directional hypotheses were proposed.