Perfectionism and Life Narratives: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

We examined how perfectionistic people conceptualize perfectionism and narrate life events using thematic analysis. Participants included 20 university students who qualified as highly perfectionistic based on cutoffs on the Almost Perfect Scale–Revised (n = 6 adaptive, n = 14 maladaptive). Participants completed a qualitative interview. Using thematic analysis, we identified five themes regarding participants’ conceptualization of perfectionism. The most common themes supported prior theory (high personal standards, performance is never good enough), along with a few comparatively understudied themes (being neat and orderly, feels superior to others, gets caught up in the details). We also identified five themes in a life narrative interview (relationship success, relationship problems, agentic redemption, agentic contamination, and academic success), which provided insight into how young, perfectionistic university students create meaning and identity through autobiographical narratives. “Relationship success” themes were most central to adaptive perfectionists, whereas “agentic redemption” themes were most central to maladaptive perfectionists.