The relationship between perfectionism and discounting measures

Relationships between perfectionism, self‐report impulsivity measures and delay discounting

“…Means, standard deviations and group comparison results (Table 2) show there were no significant DD differences between groups, replicating Wainwright and Romanowich (2016). However, participants scoring in the top 15% of the Standards scale also scored higher on two BIS‐11 scales, Attentional ( t (192) = −2.94, p = .004) and Non‐planning ( t (192) = −3.48, p = .001), compared to participants in the bottom 85%.…”

“…We conducted Pearson zero‐order correlations to assess relationships between impulsivity measures and between perfectionism measures. Consistent with Wainwright and Romanowich (2016), independent‐sample t ‐tests were conducted to make group comparisons for impulsivity levels between participants on each extreme perfectionism scale end. Comparisons were made between participants who scored in the highest 15% of the FMPS and the APS‐R and the lower 85%, for both the total score and each subscale (i.e., all participants were split into two groups, with the top 15% comprising group one and the remaining lower 85% comprising group two) The 15% cut‐off was based on previous research where participants with anorexia nervosa scored more than one standard deviation above the mean on perfectionism levels compared to healthy controls (Halmi et al, 2000), which equates to approximately the distribution's top 15%.…”

“…Based on previous results (Boone et al, 2014;Slof-Op't Landt et al, 2016;Wainwright & Romanowich, 2016), we hypothesized that (a) university students scoring higher on perfectionism measures would be less impulsive and higher scores on the FMPS and APS-R would be associated with lower DD, I-7 and BIS-11 scores. Additionally, (b) this negative relationship would be stronger for the self-report impulsivity measures (i.e., the I-7 and the BIS-11) compared to the behavioural measure (i.e., DD).…”

“…There were significant negative correlations between three of four scales, with only the unhealthy perfectionism and unhealthy impulsivity scales significantly positively correlated. Wainwright and Romanowich (2016) examined relationships between perfectionism and DD to determine if a behavioural measure would replicate results found with self‐report measures. Results showed that participants were less impulsive with increasing perfectionism levels on the FMPS, but not the APS‐R, suggesting differential associations between perfectionism and DD.…”

“…Generally, correlations between self‐report and behavioural impulsivity measures, like DD (Reynolds, Ortengren, Richards, & de Wit, 2006) have been non‐significant, indicating that self‐report and behavioural measures may be assessing different impulsivity aspects (Mackillop et al, 2016). Thus, one limitation to Wainwright and Romanowich (2016) was using a behavioural impulsivity measure and self‐report perfectionism questionnaires. It is possible that self‐report impulsivity measures better capture the relationship between perfectionism and impulsivity.…”