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The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which different dimensions of perfectionism contributed to selected responses to critical information feedback among competitive athletes. It was thought that high perfectionists would experience poorer motor performance, more negative affect, less positive affect, and attribute their performance following critical feedback to internal factors to a markedly greater extent than low perfectionists. College-aged male athletes (N = 30) were asked to perform a total body-balancing task on a stabilometer for 20 trials. Using a repeated measures randomized design, the experimental condition included receiving critical verbal feedback on performance after selected trials, while the control condition consisted of no feedback. Dependent measures included motor performance (time-on-balance), changes in negative and positive affect as a function of the conditions, and causal attributions in which performers were asked to explain the causes of their performance under each condition. To determine if perfectionism influenced the participants' responses to the conditions, partial F-tests were computed. Results indicated that the performance of individuals with higher perfectionism measures of personal standards, concerns over mistakes, doubts about actions, parental expectations, total perfectionism, and to a lesser degree, criticism, significantly deteriorated under negative feedback, the experimental condition. While neither the level of perfectionism nor the treatments influenced the performers' affect, the performers' causal attributions were significantly influenced by the experimental condition. High perfectionism, particularly related to the dimension, "concern about mistakes," was related to making internal causal attributions. It was concluded that selected dimensions of perfectionism influence motor skill performance under conditions of critical information feedback.
Perfectionism is formally defined as "the setting of excessively high standards of performance in conjunction with a tendency to make overly critical self-evaluations" (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990, p. 450). It is a trait (dispositional, stable), not state measure. To Antony and Swinson (1998), stability implies that characteristics, such as perfectionism, affect behavior across situations and over time. In extreme cases, perfectionists evaluate their experiences dichotomously, what Burns (1980) calls "all-or-none" thinking, usually labeled good or bad. They are also characterized as overemphasizing precision, neatness, order, and organization. In a somewhat distorted view of others, perfectionists contend that successful individuals achieve their goals with minimal effort, few (if any) errors, high self-confidence, and little or no...