Department of Health Sciences, Psychology Section, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology (Psychology Section), University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Clin Psychol Psychother. 2024 Mar-Apr;31(2):e2966. doi: 10.1002/cpp.2966.
Decades of research implicate perfectionism as a risk factor for psychopathology. Most research has focused on trait perfectionism (i.e., needing to be perfect), but there is a growing focus on perfectionistic self-presentation (PSP) (i.e., the need to seem perfect). The current article reports the results of a meta-analysis of previous research on the facets of PSP and psychopathology outcomes (either clinical diagnoses of psychiatric disorders or symptoms of these disorders). A systematic literature search retrieved 30 relevant studies (37 samples; N = 15,072), resulting in 192 individual effect-size indexes that were analysed with random-effect meta-analysis. Findings support the notion of PSP as a transdiagnostic factor by showing that PSP facets are associated with various forms of psychopathology, especially social anxiety, depression, vulnerable narcissism and-to lesser extent-grandiose narcissism and anorexia nervosa. The results indicated that there both commonalities across the three PSP and some unique findings highlighting the need to distinguish among appearing perfect, avoiding seeming imperfect and avoiding disclosures of imperfections. Additional analyses yielded little evidence in the results across studies including undergraduates, community samples and clinical samples. Our discussion includes a focus on factors and processes that contribute to the association between PSP and psychopathology.
几十年来的研究表明，完美主义是心理病理学的一个风险因素。大多数研究都集中在特质完美主义（即需要完美）上，但现在越来越关注完美主义的自我呈现（PSP）（即需要看起来完美）。本文报告了对 PSP 和心理病理学结果（精神障碍的临床诊断或这些障碍的症状）各个方面的先前研究的荟萃分析结果。系统的文献检索检索到 30 项相关研究（37 个样本；N=15072），产生了 192 个个体效应大小指标，这些指标用随机效应荟萃分析进行了分析。研究结果支持 PSP 作为一种跨诊断因素的观点，表明 PSP 各方面与各种形式的心理病理学有关，特别是社交焦虑、抑郁、脆弱的自恋，以及在较小程度上的浮夸的自恋和神经性厌食症。结果表明，在三个 PSP 中既有共性，也有一些独特的发现，这突出了需要区分看起来完美、避免看起来不完美和避免披露不完美。进一步的分析几乎没有证据表明在包括本科生、社区样本和临床样本在内的研究中存在这种关联。我们的讨论包括关注导致 PSP 与心理病理学之间关联的因素和过程。
