Understanding Perfectionism and How to Manage It
By David Webb, founder and editor of All-About-Psychology.com
Perfectionism involves demanding exceptionally high standards of yourself or others, often alongside harsh self-criticism, doubts about your performance, or concerns about how others judge you. It can turn an ordinary task into something that never feels quite finished or good enough.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a perfectionist. Back in the days when we wrote things down, if I didn’t think my handwriting was neat enough, I would crumple up the paper, throw it in the bin, and start again. Today, even during a real-time text or WhatsApp exchange, I carefully compose and proofread my replies for spelling and grammar.
My interest in the psychology of perfectionism is therefore personal as well as academic. I know how much time and energy these habits can consume, and how they can affect my psychological well-being. But understanding them raises a question: how can we loosen the demand for perfection while still caring about doing things well?
The different forms of perfectionism
Psychologists Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett developed a model that distinguishes three forms of perfectionism, depending on whether demands for perfection are directed toward yourself, toward others, or perceived as coming from other people.
Self-oriented perfectionism
This is where you demand perfection from yourself and judge your own performance harshly when you fall short.
Other-oriented perfectionism
This is where you expect other people to be perfect. It can involve impatience, criticism, and the feeling that if you want a job done properly, you’ll have to do it yourself.
Socially prescribed perfectionism
This is the belief that other people expect you to be perfect and that their approval depends on meeting those expectations. The pressure you perceive may not accurately reflect what they actually expect.
These are dimensions rather than mutually exclusive categories. You can recognize aspects of more than one in yourself.
Perfectionistic strivings and concerns
Another influential model, developed by Randy Frost and his colleagues, examined dimensions such as personal standards, concern over mistakes, and doubts about actions. It also included perceived parental expectations and criticism, and a preference for order and organization.
Drawing on these research traditions, psychologists have also examined two broader dimensions: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns.
- Perfectionistic strivings involve setting very high standards and pushing yourself to meet them.
- Perfectionistic concerns involve worrying about mistakes, doubting your performance, and fearing negative evaluation by others.
This framework asks a different question from the three forms above. Rather than focusing on where demands for perfection are directed or perceived to come from, it distinguishes the pursuit of demanding standards from concerns about falling short. Both can be present in the same person.
Perfectionism versus striving for excellence
Given that many perfectionists are motivated, hard-working high achievers, it’s easy to assume that perfectionism is responsible for their success. But could they do just as well, or better, without demanding flawlessness?
Psychologist Patrick Gaudreau introduced the concept of excellencism to distinguish striving for excellence from striving for perfection. The distinction concerns the standards themselves: aiming to do something extremely well is different from insisting that it must be perfect.
A person striving for excellence can set ambitious goals while accepting that mistakes happen and standards sometimes need to be flexible. A person striving for perfection aims for a flawless result, leaving less room for that flexibility.
Gaudreau and his colleagues examined this distinction in five studies involving 2,157 participants. In one study of undergraduates, students striving for perfection achieved worse grades than those striving for excellence. This finding challenges the assumption that demanding perfection necessarily improves performance. It doesn’t establish that perfectionists perform worse in every setting, or that perfectionism caused the difference in grades.
The useful question is therefore whether demanding flawlessness adds anything to the care and effort you already put into your work. Letting go of that demand doesn’t have to mean giving up on doing something well.
Is perfectionism increasing?
A BBC Reel featuring perfectionism researcher Thomas Curran first piqued my interest in this question. His work with colleagues suggests that the increase is more than an impression.
Their 2026 meta-analysis of perfectionism among college students brought together 307 samples involving 82,939 students in the US, UK, and Canada. Self-oriented perfectionism, concerns about mistakes, and doubts about actions increased over time. Socially prescribed perfectionism showed a particularly notable acceleration from the early 2000s.
What might explain the increase?
The researchers also examined economic conditions. Rising income inequality was associated with steeper increases in perfectionistic concerns, while declining gross domestic product (GDP) per person was associated with higher perfectionistic strivings.
One possible explanation is that economic insecurity creates pressure to compete, achieve, and avoid mistakes. However, these associations don’t establish cause and effect. They describe patterns across countries and time periods, rather than showing what caused any individual’s perfectionism.
The population studied matters, too. These findings concern college students in three countries. They don’t tell us whether perfectionism is increasing among middle-aged or older adults, or whether the same trends apply across other countries and cultures.
Clinical perfectionism and the need to keep proving yourself
In 2002, Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper, and Christopher Fairburn proposed a clinical model of perfectionism centered on how people judge their self-worth. In this model, your view of yourself depends too heavily on pursuing and meeting demanding personal standards, even when doing so has harmful consequences.
A disappointing result can therefore feel like a verdict on you as a person. Yet succeeding may not settle the matter either. You might dismiss an achievement as too easy and decide that next time, the standard needs to be higher.
The Centre for Clinical Interventions describes several patterns that can keep perfectionism going in its explanatory workbook (PDF). These include:
- Repeatedly checking or correcting work to make sure it meets your standards.
- Seeking reassurance from other people about whether you’ve done something well enough.
- Focusing on mistakes while overlooking what went well.
- Discounting achievements and setting an even tougher target.
These habits can leave the underlying beliefs untested. If you always check repeatedly or seek reassurance, you don’t get the opportunity to discover whether you could manage without doing so. This helps explain how the pattern can persist even when it interferes with other parts of your life.
Perfectionism and the procrastination paradox
Another finding I can certainly relate to is the connection between perfectionism and procrastination. At first glance, it seems counterintuitive. You might expect someone who cares so much about getting a task right to be keen to get started. Research, however, suggests that the relationship depends on which aspect of perfectionism you’re looking at.
A 2017 meta-analysis by Fuschia Sirois and colleagues found contrasting patterns:
- Higher perfectionistic concerns were associated with more procrastination.
- Higher perfectionistic strivings were associated with less procrastination.
The analysis of concerns included 43 samples and 10,000 participants; the analysis of strivings included 38 samples and 9,544 participants. These were small-to-moderate associations, so neither dimension determines whether someone will procrastinate.
The findings challenge the idea that perfectionists inevitably put things off because their standards are too high. They also don’t mean that raising your standards will cure procrastination. The distinction matters because treating perfectionism as a single characteristic can conceal these opposing relationships.
For a broader look at delaying tasks, explore these psychology resources on procrastination.
Perfectionism and psychological well-being
Researchers often describe perfectionism as transdiagnostic, meaning that it can be relevant across different mental health conditions. This helps explain why research on perfectionism extends beyond achievement and productivity.
A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis by Jessica Lunn and colleagues examined 121 studies involving young people aged 6–24. Perfectionistic concerns were moderately associated with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Perfectionistic strivings showed smaller associations with anxiety and OCD symptoms.
These findings concern symptoms, so they shouldn’t be read as showing that someone with perfectionistic tendencies necessarily has a mental health disorder. Nor do the associations establish that perfectionism caused those symptoms.
The distinction from the procrastination findings is useful here. Being less likely to delay tasks doesn’t necessarily mean that a pattern of striving is free from psychological costs. Different outcomes need to be examined in their own right.
How to reduce perfectionism
Assuming, like me, you’d like to rein in your perfectionism, there’s encouraging evidence that it can be reduced. A 2022 review of 15 randomized controlled trials, involving 912 participants, found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) produced medium-to-large reductions across several measures of perfectionism.
The review included structured self-help and face-to-face treatment. Comparisons with other active treatments were limited, so it doesn’t establish that CBT is better than every alternative. You can read more about how cognitive behavioral therapy works in this introduction by psychologist Peter McEvoy.
Try a small behavioral experiment
One approach used in CBT is to test a perfectionistic prediction through a planned change in behavior. The Centre for Clinical Interventions explains this approach in its workbook on reducing perfectionist behaviors (PDF). The exercise below illustrates the approach; the treatment findings above don’t establish the effectiveness of this particular exercise on its own.
- Choose a small, everyday task where mistakes would have minor consequences, such as sending a casual email to a friend.
- Write down your prediction. For example: “If I check this email only once, I’ll miss a mistake and my friend will think I’m careless.”
- Make one manageable change. Read the email once for clarity, then send it without returning for repeated checks.
- Compare your prediction with what you can actually observe. Did a mistake cause a problem? Avoid assuming you know what the other person thought.
- Record what you learned and repeat a manageable version of the experiment on another occasion.
The aim is to gather evidence, not to guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. If something does go wrong, consider its actual consequences, how you handled it, and whether your original prediction needs adjusting.
I intend to start with something simple: spending less time checking the spelling and grammar of messages to family and friends. It’s baby steps for me, but it gives me a specific habit to work on.
If perfectionism is causing substantial distress or disrupting daily life, a qualified mental health professional can help you work through these patterns and tailor treatment to your circumstances.
Final thoughts
The more I look into this topic, the less convinced I am that perfectionism is simply a byproduct of caring about doing things well. Understanding it has also given me a more useful question to ask myself: what am I expecting this extra checking, preparation, or revision to achieve?
This article is adapted from an article originally published on the All About Psychology Substack.
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