A controversial issue in sport perfectionism research concerns the degree to which athletes' perfectionistic tendencies are adaptive or maladaptive. Insight into this issue can be obtained by distinguishing between two perfectionism dimensions: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Past narrative reviews concede that perfectionistic concerns are maladaptive in sport, but offer contrasting conclusions about whether athletes' perfectionistic strivings are adaptive or maladaptive (see Flett & Hewitt, 2005;Hall, 2006;Stoeber, 2011). To address this discrepancy, this review systematically documented, categorised, and quantitatively analysed 201 correlations from 31 studies on perfectionism in athletes. When bivariate correlations were regarded, the proportion of evidence associating perfectionistic strivings with adaptive characteristics in sport was slightly greater than the proportion of evidence associating the dimension with maladaptive characteristics in sport. When partial correlations were regarded (i.e., correlations that controlled for overlap with perfectionistic concerns), a clear majority of evidence associated perfectionistic strivings with adaptive characteristics and only a small minority associated it with maladaptive characteristics. Across both instances, though, considerable evidence (as represented by nonsignificant correlations) associated perfectionistic strivings with neither adaptive nor maladaptive characteristics. Collectively, these findings suggest that perfectionistic strivings among athletes are predominantly adaptive, occasionally neutral, and rarely maladaptive. However, this trend is only apparent when the negative influence of perfectionistic concerns is controlled. Implications of these findings on future research directions and applied sport psychology practice are discussed.

Whereas some researchers have argued that perfectionism in sports is maladaptive because it is related to dysfunctional characteristics such as higher competitive anxiety, the present article argues that striving for perfection is not maladaptive and is unrelated to competitive anxiety. Four samples of athletes (high school athletes, female soccer players, and two samples of university student athletes) completed measures of perfectionism during competitions and competitive anxiety. Across samples, results show that overall perfectionism was associated with higher cognitive and somatic competitive anxiety. However, when striving for perfection and negative reactions to imperfection were differentiated, only the latter were associated with higher anxiety, whereas striving for perfection was unrelated to anxiety. Moreover, once the influence of negative reactions to imperfection was partialled out, striving for perfection was associated with lower anxiety and higher self-confidence. The present findings suggest that striving for perfection in sports is not maladaptive. On the contrary, athletes who strive for perfection and successfully control their negative reactions to imperfection may even experience less anxiety and more self-confidence during competitions.

No abstract

Objectives: Challenging views that perfectionism is a maladaptive factor in sport and that it is related to a preoccupation with performance goals and a neglect of mastery goals, the present article argues that perfectionism in athletes is not generally maladaptive, but shows differential relationships with mastery and performance goals depending on which facets of perfectionism are regarded. Method: Going beyond the dichotomous achievement goal framework, two studies with N = 204 high school athletes and N = 147 university student are presented investigating how two facets of perfectionism-striving for perfection and negative reactions to imperfection (Stoeber, Otto, Pescheck, Becker, & Stoll, 2007)-relate to athletes' achievement goals. Results: Following the trichotomous achievement goal framework, Study 1 found striving for perfection to be positively related to mastery and performance-approach goals, whereas negative reactions to imperfection were positively related to performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals and inversely to mastery goals. Following the 2 × 2 framework, Study 2 found striving for perfection to be positively related to mastery-approach and performance-approach goals whereas negative reactions to imperfection were positively related to mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Moreover, negative reactions to imperfection predicted residual increases in mastery-avoidance goals over three months. Conclusions: It is concluded that striving for perfection in athletes is associated with an adaptive pattern of achievement goals whereas negative reactions to imperfection are associated with a maladaptive pattern. Thus, striving for perfection in sport may be adaptive in athletes who do not experience strong negative reactions when performance is less than perfect.

Research on perfectionism suggests that is it useful to differentiate between perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Regarding the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework, the usefulness of this differentiation was recently demonstrated in a study with university student athletes (Stoeber, Stoll, Pescheck, & Otto, 2008, Study 2) that found perfectionistic strivings associated with mastery-approach and performanceapproach goals and perfectionistic concerns with mastery-avoidance, performanceapproach, and performance-avoidance goals. Because the study was largely exploratory and only investigated non-elite athletes, the aim of the present research was to replicate and extend these findings by investigating a sample of 138 young elite ice-hockey players, while adding further measures of perfectionism and using structural equation modeling (SEM) to confirm the relationships between perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, and the 2 × 2 achievement goals. The SEM results showed that, also in elite athletes, perfectionistic strivings are associated with mastery-approach and performance-approach goals, whereas perfectionistic concerns are associated with mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Findings corroborate the importance of differentiating between perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns when regarding perfectionism in sports, because only perfectionistic concerns (and not perfectionistic strivings) are associated with maladaptive patterns of achievement goals.