Perfectionism in High School Students, Academic Emotions, Real and Perceived Academic Achievement

Abstract

Being studied initially in the field of psychopathology, the perfectionism was considered as a personality style characterized by negative aspects like striving to be perfect, self-criticism and also low self-esteem and depression. But the last decade's research drew up perfectionism as a multidimensional construct which imply personal and social elements, with both positive and negative effects onto performance and development. So, the multidimensional model belonging to Hewitt and Flett (1991) distinguish between self-oriented perfectionism; other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism. In the educational field, the perfectionism was studied in relation to academic performance and motivation, to achievement goals and to some negative emotions like anxiety, shame, and guilt. But there are just a small number of studies that analyzed the perfectionism in relation to positive emotions in educational settings. Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, and Perry (2002) indicated that students are experiencing a rich diversity of emotions in different academic contexts. In this study, we explored the self-oriented and the sociallyprescribed perfectionism, in relation to positive and negative test-related emotions, within a group of 187 high school students. Results indicated that, when controlling for academic achievement, hope and pride, but also anxiety, anger and guilt are significantly associated with self-oriented perfectionism and uncorrelated with socially-prescribed perfectionism. Instead, the socially-prescribed perfectionism was correlated but the self-oriented perfectionism was not correlated with hopelessness.

Features of perfectionism among future environmental engineers

“…The philosopher argued that it is possible to become a superman by overcoming internal slavery, which will help to reach a new level of development. That is, this is such a person who is constantly improving, thereby taking responsibility for one's weaknesses, training, mind, emotions, knows how to control oneself and is not subject to destructive motivations [3].…”

“…Representatives of this approach do not exclude the fact that anxiety can become a problem of realization of perfectionist's abilities. Perfectionist tendencies direct a person to search for a life goal that frees the person from the restrictions imposed by social stereotypes, as well as excessive anxiety [3].…”

“…The phenomenon of perfectionism first attracted attention both among psychologistsresearchers and practitioners due to its ambiguous effect on human activity and emotional status. The first studies began in the 1980s [3].…”