Perfectionism, anger, somatic health, and positive affect

Abstract

The associations between perfectionism, anger, somatic health, and positive affect were examined in 184 Swedish adults from a randomly selected population sample. Somewhat unexpectedly, anger was found to be associated with self-oriented perfectionism rather than with socially prescribed perfectionism. With regard to somatic health complaints, both socially prescribed perfectionism and self-oriented perfectionism tended to correlate positively with self-reported somatic complaints, whereas other-oriented perfectionism appeared as a predictor of whether the participants were undergoing medical treatment or not. Finally, the results did not support the notion of self-oriented perfectionism representing a positive, adaptive dimension of perfectionism; on the contrary, this dimension was found to be negatively associated with positive affect