Perfectionism Affects Blood Pressure in Response to Repeated Exposure to Stress

Abstract

This pilot study examined the effects of perfectionism on blood pressure (BP) in response to repeated exposure to mental arithmetic stressors. College students (N = 30) in a laboratory setting were administered a series of challenging mathematical tasks. BP was measured at baseline and after each task. Multilevel modelling analyses revealed that BP tended to decline over the course of the mathematical tasks. However, higher levels of performance standards predicted relatively stable levels of systolic BP, whereas moderate and lower levels of standards predicted declines in systolic BP. Higher levels of self-critical perfectionism predicted generally sustained levels of diastolic BP, with moderate and low self-criticism predicting declines in diastolic BP during the repeated stressors. These preliminary results suggest that students with higher levels of perfectionism may be at risk for physiological problems associated with stress reactivity, perhaps especially so in situations in which they experience persistent stress. Although results were qualified by a relatively small sample size, effects were statistically significant and supported the importance of examining the short-term and long-term implications of the effects of perfectionism on cardiovascular function and the different implications of elevations in systolic and diastolic BP.

The relentless pursuit of perfectionism: A review of perfectionism in the workplace and an agenda for future research

“…Several researchers suggest that perfectionism links to somatic problems such as migraine headaches (see Bottos & Dewey, ; Burns, ; Stout, ; Wolff, ), hypertension and cardiovascular illnesses (Albert, Rice, & Caffee, ; Shanmugasegaram et al, ), gastrointestinal illnesses (Flett, Baricza, Gupta, Hewitt, & Endler, ), asthma (Kristiansen, Abrahamsen, & Stensrud, ), and chronic pain (Hadjistavropoulos, Dash, Hadjistavropoulos, & Sullivan, ). Relatedly, Molnar et al () asserted that socially prescribed perfectionism is associated with a range of ill health symptoms (i.e., sleep problems, shortness of breath, upset stomach, fatigue, pains, and ailments).…”

The Roles of Anxious Rearing, Negative Affect, and Effortful Control in a Model of Risk for Child Perfectionism

“…Maladaptive perfectionists show the opposite physiological profile. For example, systolic blood pressure, used as a measure of vagal tone, was found to be stable over the course of difficult tasks for perfectionists, while it declined for those with lower levels of standards (Albert, Rice, & Caffee, 2014;Besser, Flett, Hewitt, & Guez, 2008).…”

Is it better not to think about it? Effects of positive and negative perfectionistic cognitions when there is increased pressure to perform

“…This pattern of results is also in line with prior results that frequently indicated that perfectionistic concerns are a stronger predictor of distress than perfectionistic strivings are on the level of dispositional perfectionism (see Stoeber & Gaudreau, 2017) and on the level of perfectionistic cognitions (Prestele & Altstötter‐Gleich, 2019a). However, these findings might not hold for all kinds of criterion variables (e.g., positive affect; Stoeber et al, 2010) or all situations (e.g., repeated failure; Albert, Rice, & Caffee, 2016). Future studies might systematically investigate the predictive validity of between‐person differences in PSC beyond PCC across positive and negative criterion variables and across different situations (e.g., situations with a more direct focus on potential gains).…”