The present study examined the relationship between the two central dimensions of perfectionism, Pure Personal Standards (PPS) and Maladaptive Evaluative Concerns (MEC), and psychological distress as well as positive affect. The study also explored two potential mediators, self-concealment (SC) and contingent self-worth (CSW), of the relationship between these perfectionism dimensions and various mental health measures. Participants completed questionnaires assessing perfectionism, the two mediator variables, and a number of measures of mental health, including depression, fear of negative evaluation, positive affectivity, and eating disorder symptomatology. Analyses revealed that extracting out the MEC from PPS perfectionism scores using partial correlations removed the one significant correlation of PPS with psychopathology, and strengthened its positive correlation with well-being. In contrast, the MEC dimension of perfectionism was positively related to psychopathology and negatively related to well-being, even when controlling for PPS scores using partial correlations. Mediational analyses indicated that CSW significantly mediated the relationships between PPS and mental health, including fully mediating the relationship between PPS and each measure of psychopathology. Multiple mediational analyses revealed that SC and/or CSW mediated the relationships between MEC and mental health indices. These findings suggest that the central aspect of perfectionism related to psychopathology is the MEC dimension whereas PPS is more closely associated with positive features of mental health. Findings also suggest that future investigations of the relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology take into consideration the mediating effects of SC and CSW.Portions of this manuscript were presented at the annual meeting of the European Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies,

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of perfectionism to judgmental biases, including estimates of aversiveness and probability of negative events and consequences, as well as the relationship of each of these constructs to measures of anxiety, stress, and depression. The Maladaptive Evaluative Concerns (MEC), but not the Pure Personal Standards (PPS), dimension of perfectionism was associated with greater psychological cost and perceived probability estimates, even controlling for concurrent psychological distress. In mediational analyses, judgmental bias scores significantly mediated, although only partially, the relationship between MEC-MPS scores and each measure of psychopathology. In contrast, the relationship of PPS-MPS scores to psychopathology was either non-significant or fully mediated by the judgmental bias measures, with one exception. Of the two judgmental bias factor scores, perceived probabilities rather than psychological costs most consistently mediated the relationship between the perfectionism dimensions and measures of psychological distress. This is the first study providing evidence that judgmental bias as well as the MEC dimension of perfectionism are each uniquely associated with risk for psychopathology. These findings warrant further investigation in order to elucidate how these two sets of cognitive factors increase risk for the development of psychopathology.