Parenting, personality, and culture as predictors of perfectionism

This study examined the relationship between parenting styles, personality traits, culture, and perfectionism. Male and female undergraduate university students from the US (n = 168) and the Middle East (n = 74) completed self-report measures regarding their perceptions of how they were parented, the Big Five Personality Inventory, and two multidimensional measures of perfectionism. As predicted, authoritarian and neglectful parenting was positively correlated with maladaptive forms of perfectionism; they were also positively correlated with personal standards, but only authoritarian parenting was significantly correlated with self-oriented perfectionism. In terms of personality and perfectionism, conscientiousness was positively correlated with adaptive dimensions of perfectionism (personal standards, organization, and self-oriented perfectionism), whereas emotional stability was negatively associated with the maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism (parental criticism, doubts about abilities, concerns about mistakes, and socially prescribed perfectionism). Parenting was more predictive than personality regarding parental expectations, parental criticism, and socially prescribed perfectionism, while personality was more predictive of doubts about abilities, concern over mistakes, personal standards, organization, and self-oriented perfectionism. Middle Eastern participants scored significantly higher than US participants on parental expectations and self-oriented perfectionism.