Treatment Interventions for Perfectionism—A Cognitive Perspective: Introduction to the Special Issue

The current article provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue and includes a discussion of key issues pertaining to psychological treatments for perfectionism. We describe and review two new treatment intervention studies in this special issue that focus on perfectionism in university students as well as other contemporary research on the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy to treat perfectionists. While the significant reductions in levels of perfectionism as a result of treatment are noteworthy, we caution that perfectionism is a relatively enduring trait; thus, some perfectionists will remain treatment resistant and overall levels of perfectionism may remain relatively high even when significant improvements are realized. Moreover, we discuss the established tendency for perfectionism to be associated with residual symptoms of distress following treatment. As part of our discussion of the other articles in this special issue, we highlight cognitive factors of likely significance in the treatment of perfectionism, including the ruminative response style, the tendency to experience perfectionistic automatic thoughts, and the role of core irrational beliefs in the development of perfectionism. These articles underscore the need to consider key cognitive factors that are central to dysfunctional forms of perfectionism. This special issue on perfectionism is the third special issue on this topic to appear in the Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy under the editorialship of Windy Dryden. We are very grateful for the continuing opportunity in this journal to explore issues related to the cognitive and treatment aspects of perfectionism.     

Learning in a task of complex auditory streaming and identification

Adult humans were studied for improvements in their ability to segregate natural whole speech in background noise, in 6 test sessions spaced with a very wide range of inter-session interval (ISI) ranging from minutes to weeks apart so as to examine the effect of this parameter on initial (early) and late components of perceptual learning. Improvements were found even with spacings of 3 weeks between the punctate task sessions. All subjects showed similar total learning amounts but there were sex- and ISI-dependent differences in learning patterns, which we indexed by dividing the overall exponentially-decreasing learning pattern into an early phase between the first two sessions and a later phase between the second and sixth sessions. Males tested at all ISIs and females tested at short (2, 5 and 15 min) and long (1–21 days) ISIs showed small amounts of early-phase learning and large amounts of late-phase learning. However, females tested at intermediate (30 min and 1 h) ISIs showed only early learning, i.e., faster learning given that the total learning was the same. This sex- and ISI-specific deviant pattern could be changed to the standard pattern by interposing an overnight interruption that included sleep amongst test sessions. Thus, improvement in this complex auditory streaming and identification task can occur even with very brief and widely-spaced exposure, generally through a standard pattern of slower overall learning, but also through a sex- and ISI-specific deviant pattern of very rapid early learning which can be modulated by interposed delay unlike the standard pattern.     

Five Dimensions of Faith and Spiritually of Older African American Women Transitioning Out of Homelessness

Background Homelessness among older African American women is emerging as a serious social problem. The increasing cost of living, diminishing community resources, and shrinking retirement benefits, as well as reduced social services are resulting in greater numbers of older minority women becoming homeless. Aims This investigation explores the relevance of faith and spirituality to an advocacy assessment designed to help participants resolve issues that operate as barriers to their leaving and staying out of homelessness. Methods A substudy of a larger research and development project was undertaken, in which qualitative interview methods were used to illuminate the role of faith and spirituality resources in the lives of 84 older homeless African American women. Comparative thematic analysis of illustrative cases was undertaken to better understand the role of faith and spirituality in the women’s lives and in how they used faith and spirituality in coping with homelessness. Findings Five dimensions of faith and spirituality, (a) identity and beliefs; (b) affiliation and membership; (c) involvement; (d) practices; and (e) benefits, served as promising resources in understanding life spaces of homeless minority women and identified promising advocacy strategies. Two cases describe the realities of homelessness for older minority women endeavoring to transition out of homelessness and illustrate how faith and spirituality can buffer stress, facilitate coping, and sustain motivation. Conclusions How older homeless African American women use their faith and spiritual resources to cope with demands of homelessness, challenges of transition, and recovery from the multiple traumas resulting from being homeless makes the assessment of faith and spirituality an important part of the advocacy process.     

Perfectionism and Deficits in Cognitive Emotion Regulation

The current study investigated the general hypothesis that perfectionists have deficits in cognitive emotion regulation. A sample of 100 students completed the Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), and a measure of depression. Correlational analyses revealed that frequent thoughts involving perfectionism were associated with maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation tendencies, including catastrophization, self-blame, rumination, and lack of positive reappraisal. Socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with the maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies of self-blame, catastrophization, and rumination, and it was correlated negatively with the adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies of putting into perspective and positive reappraisal. Trait self-oriented perfectionism was linked with self-blame. As expected, higher levels of depression were associated with perfectionism cognitions, socially prescribed perfectionism and deficits in cognitive emotion regulation. Our findings suggest the need for interventions designed to bolster the cognitive coping skills of at-risk perfectionists. This research was supported by a major research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. Gordon Flett was also supported by a Canada Research Chair in Personality and Health.     

Cognitive And Self-Regulation Aspects Of Perfectionism And Their Implications For Treatment: Introduction To The Special Issue

The current article provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue on the cognitive and self-regulation aspects of perfectionism and their implications for treatment. Themes expressed in these papers include the association between perfectionism and deficits in cognitive self-management, the significant link between distress and automatic thoughts reflecting the need to be perfect, the importance of examining mediators and moderators of the association between perfectionism and psychological distress, and the specific role of perfectionism in suicidal tendencies and self-harm. It is also argued that certain core features of perfectionism and its associated correlates tend to impede treatment progress. Central factors associated with perfectionism that have a deleterious impact on treatment progress include the fear of failure and fear of embarrassment and exposure, a punishing orientation toward the self, pessimism and hopelessness about the possibility of recovery, and a rigid adherence to unrealistic goals and standards, including goals for treatment and recovery. We describe case studies illustrating treatment resistance among perfectionists and we reiterate the growing need for empirical research on the efficacy of clinical interventions designed for perfectionists. This article was supported by major research grants from Health Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada to the first two authors, and a Canada Research Chair in Personality & Health awarded to the first author.     

Delinquent peer affiliation and conduct problems: A twin study

Many putative environmental risks correlate with individuals' genotypes. The association between delinquent peer affiliation and conduct problems may occur because of shared genetic liability. Five hundred fifty three monozygotic and 558 dizygotic twin pairs, aged 11 to 18 years, were assessed for delinquent peer affiliation and conduct problems. The authors investigated whether genes contribute to both delinquent peer affiliation and the correlation between delinquent peer affiliations and conduct problems. Delinquent peer affiliation was influenced by genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental factors; genetic factors also contributed to the correlation between delinquent peer affiliations and conduct problems, providing evidence for genotype-environment correlation. The magnitude of the genetic variance of conduct problems was contextually dependent on levels of delinquent peer affiliation and was greater at higher levels of delinquent peer affiliation.     

An overview of paradoxical counseling and its congruence with biblical writings

Paradoxical counseling (PC) became popular in the second part of last century with the advent of systemic and multi-relational therapies. Since then, it has changed into a variety of behavioral techniques still in use today. How consistent or inconsistent is PC will depend a great deal upon each counselor's beliefs, including those who consider themselves pastoral counselors or Christian counselors. The authors suggest, however, that using workbooks written in both linear-straight-forward or circular-paradoxical ways as homework assignments may enlarge the expertise of a variety of counselors in ways perhaps heretofore unfamiliar to them.     

Aging and visual 3-D shape recognition from motion

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the ability of younger and older adults to recognize 3-D object shape from patterns of optical motion. In Experiment 1, participants were required to identify dotted surfaces that rotated in depth (i.e., surface structure portrayed using the kinetic depth effect). The task difficulty was manipulated by limiting the surface point lifetimes within the stimulus apparent motion sequences. In Experiment 2, the participants identified solid, naturally shaped objects (replicas of bell peppers, Capsicum annuum) that were defined by occlusion boundary contours, patterns of specular highlights, or combined optical patterns containing both boundary contours and specular highlights. Significant and adverse effects of increased age were found in both experiments. Despite the fact that previous research has found that increases in age do not reduce solid shape discrimination, our current results indicated that the same conclusion does not hold for shape identification. We demonstrated that aging results in a reduction in the ability to visually recognize 3-D shape independent of how the 3-D structure is defined (motions of isolated points, deformations of smooth optical fields containing specular highlights, etc.).     

Human biological and nonbiological point-light movements: Creation and validation of the dataset

Human action perception is so powerful that people can identify movement efficiently in the absence of pictorial information, such as in point-light displays. Interest is growing in this type of stimulus for research in neuroscience. This interest stems from the advantage of separating the component of pure human action kinematics from other pictorial information, such as facial expression and muscle contraction. Although several groups have previously developed datasets of human point-light actions, due to the lack of datasets composed of daily actions with short durations, we developed 20 biological and 40 control (scrambled) point-light movements by using the technique of recording people wearing reflector patches. The videos are about 1 s long. Subsequently, we performed a judgment task in which 100 participants (50 male and 50 female) evaluated each video according to three categories: human action resemblance, performed action, and gender of actor. We present the mean scores of each evaluation for each video, and further propose a selection of the most suitable videos to be used as human point-light action displays and scrambled point-light displays for control. Finally, we discuss our findings on the gender attributions of the point-light displays.     

Physiological evidence that a masked unrelated intervening item disrupts semantic priming: implications for theories of semantic representation and retrieval models of semantic priming

Event-related potentials were recorded in a paradigm where an unrelated word was interposed between two related words. In one condition, the intervening item was masked and in another condition it was not. The N400 component indicated that priming of the related word was disrupted by the intervening item whether it was masked or not. The data are interpreted to be inconsistent with retrieval models of priming.