School of Psychology, Curtin University, Australia.
School of Psychology, Curtin University, Australia.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2019 Sep;64:72-79. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2019.02.009. Epub 2019 Mar 1.
Perfectionism is associated with the development and maintenance of several psychological disorders. Consequently, efforts to better understand perfectionism have potential transdiagnostic impact. One mechanism proposed to underlie perfectionism is an attention bias towards information signalling threats to perfectionism whereby people with elevated perfectionism selectively attend to threatening stimuli.
The present study assessed whether two core dimensions of perfectionism, perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns, are characterised by a threat-related attention bias, and whether this bias was characterised by attention being more rapidly captured by the stimuli (engagement bias), or of greater difficulty to disengage attention (disengagement bias). Participants (N = 108) completed measures of perfectionistic strivings and concerns, and symptoms of psychological distress before completing a modified dot-probe task to measure attention biases. Attention bias index scores were calculated across three factors: engagement bias vs disengagement bias, perfectionism relevant vs irrelevant stimuli, and negative vs positive emotional stimuli.
Overall, perfectionistic concerns were associated with a disengagement bias for negative stimuli, regardless of whether stimuli were perfectionism relevant or not. No other significant main or interaction effects were observed.
The study was cross-sectional in design, and no temporal or causal inferences could be made. Additionally, participants were from a community sample and therefore replication is required in clinical populations.
These findings demonstrate that individuals higher in perfectionistic concerns experience difficulty withdrawing their attention from emotionally negative stimuli. These findings contribute new information to our theoretical understandings of perfectionism and provide support for the cognitive-behavioural model of perfectionism.
完美主义与多种心理障碍的发展和维持有关。因此，努力更好地理解完美主义具有潜在的跨诊断影响。一种被认为是完美主义基础的机制是对暗示完美主义威胁的信息的注意偏向，即具有较高完美主义的人会选择性地注意威胁性刺激。
本研究评估了完美主义的两个核心维度，即完美主义追求和完美主义担忧，是否具有与威胁相关的注意偏向，以及这种偏向是否表现为注意力更容易被刺激所捕捉（参与偏向），或者更难以转移注意力（脱离偏向）。参与者（N=108）在完成一项修改后的点探测任务以测量注意偏向之前，完成了完美主义追求和担忧以及心理困扰症状的测量。注意力偏向指数得分是通过三个因素计算的：参与偏向与脱离偏向、与完美主义相关的刺激与不相关的刺激、消极情绪刺激与积极情绪刺激。
总体而言，无论刺激是否与完美主义相关，完美主义担忧都与对消极刺激的脱离偏向有关。没有观察到其他显著的主效应或交互效应。
该研究为横断面设计，无法进行时间或因果推断。此外，参与者来自社区样本，因此需要在临床人群中进行复制。
这些发现表明，完美主义担忧较高的个体在从情绪消极的刺激中撤回注意力时会遇到困难。这些发现为我们对完美主义的理论理解提供了新的信息，并为完美主义的认知行为模型提供了支持。
