What Kind of Perfectionist Are You?
Two halves that pull in opposite directions
Is perfectionism good for you or bad for you? The question has no single answer because perfectionism is two things wearing one name. Wanting to do things excellently and being afraid of not doing them excellently look identical from outside and behave completely differently: one predicts achievement and reasonable wellbeing, the other predicts anxiety, burnout and giving up. Most people have some of each, and the balance is the whole story.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about how you generally are, including at home and not only at work.
What it measures
Two halves. Strivings is holding yourself to high standards and wanting to do things properly. Concerns is the fear underneath: worry about mistakes, doubt about whether it was good enough, and the sense that other people are judging. They correlate positively, which is why they get confused, but they predict opposite outcomes.
Based on: The two-factor model of perfectionism: strivings and concerns (Stoeber & Otto, 2006)
Possible results
Strivings
Wanting to do things excellently.
Concerns
Fear of the mistake, and of being judged for it.
Common questions
Is perfectionism a good thing or not?
It depends entirely which half you have. High standards with low fear is associated with achievement and with wellbeing that is no worse than average. High standards with high fear is associated with a long list of unpleasant outcomes. This is why the question never settles in ordinary conversation - both people are right about a different half of the same word.
Can I keep the standards and drop the fear?
That is the right target and it is achievable, which is the encouraging part. The two are separate enough to move independently. What works is not lowering your standards - it is separating the result from the verdict, usually by making failure smaller and more frequent rather than rarer and more dangerous. People who ship often are not less exacting than people who do not; they have just had the experience of surviving an imperfect thing a great many times.
Does perfectionism cause procrastination?
Only the fear half does, and the distinction matters because the popular version gets it backwards. Meta-analytic work finds that high standards go with slightly less procrastination, while the concerns half goes with more. So the sentence I procrastinate because I am a perfectionist is true for some people and false for others, and which one you are is exactly what the gap between your two bars is telling you.
Sources
- Stoeber, J., & Otto, K. (2006). Positive conceptions of perfectionism: Approaches, evidence, challenges. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
- Limburg, K., Watson, H. J., Hagger, M. S., & Egan, S. J. (2017). The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology.
- Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin.
An honest note The two-factor structure is one of the better-established findings in this corner of psychology, and the practical conclusion is unusually clear: the concerns half is the one linked to anxiety, depression and burnout, while the strivings half on its own is not. Two things worth adding. First, the two correlate positively, so people high on standards are somewhat more likely to also carry the fear - that is a tendency, not a rule, and the combination you have is the useful information. Second, a large 2019 analysis of data collected between 1989 and 2016 found that perfectionism has been rising across generations, most steeply the socially prescribed kind - the belief that others demand perfection of you. If this feels heavier than it did for your parents, that is not your imagination.