Exploring The Role of Perfectionism in School Success: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

Backgrounds: Perfectionism is a multifaceted personality disposition characterized by striving for perfection, pursuing exceedingly high standards, and making highly critical self-evaluations. This disposition can impact mental and behavioral health and influence learning behavior in students. Perfectionism can foster a mastery orientation, where students commit to challenges and maintain confidence despite failures, or lead to learned helplessness, where students give up in the face of failure, attributing it to a lack of ability. Perfectionistic pressures from the environment, such as those perceived from teachers, may influence students’ personal perfectionism and learning behavior, and, in turn, their academic achievement. Methods: A structural equation modelling approach with latent variables was used to investigate the sequential mediating role of personal perfectionism (standard, order, and discrepancy) and learned helplessness/mastery orientation in the relationship between students’ perceptions of teacher perfectionism and their school achievements. We hypothesize that a mismatch between teachers’ expectations or evaluations and students’ actual performance (Teacher Discrepancy) may lead to students experiencing a gap between their self-perception and their actual abilities (Personal Discrepancy). This misalignment could result in feelings of helplessness and reduced achievement. On the other hand, if students perceive their teachers as having high standards and maintaining good order (adaptive perfectionism), this could encourage students to develop similar high standards and organizational skills (adaptive perfectionism), fostering a mastery-oriented mindset and ultimately enhancing their achievement. The study included 505 Italian high school students (Mage=16; SD =1.35). The instruments used were the Teacher Almost Perfect Scale, the Italian version of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised, and the Learned Helplessness Questionnaire. Results: The SEM analysis revealed significant indirect effects. From Teacher Standards to school achievement via Personal Standards and mastery orientation (β = .12, p ≤ .01); from Teacher Discrepancy to School Achievement via Personal Standards and mastery orientation (β = -.04, p ≤ .01); from Teacher Discrepancy to School Achievement via Personal Discrepancy and mastery orientation (β = -.04, p ≤ .01). Conclusions: The findings highlight the roles of personal perfectionism (standards and discrepancy) and learning behaviors (learned helplessness/mastery orientation) in mediating the relationship between students’ perceptions of their teachers’ perfectionism and their academic achievement. This suggests that both the positive and negative dimensions of perceived teacher perfectionism can significantly impact students’ learning outcomes, mediated through their own perfectionistic tendencies. This study extends knowledge of factors that can impact students’ mental health, with important practical implications for prevent internalizing psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Keywords

• health psychology
• learned helplessness, mastery-orientation
• perfectionism
• students’ mental health.