Perfectionism, Prolonged Stress Reactivity, and Depression: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Analysis
Open accessAbstract
Perfectionism is a vulnerability factor for a wide array of psychopathology. Despite much evidence suggesting dysregulated stress response as an intermediary process that links perfectionism to psychopathology, the lack of a cross-lagged examination deterred researchers from making causal interpretations. This study examined the directionality of effects among perfectionism dimensions, stress reactivity, and depression. A total of 189 participants at time 1 and 94 at time 2 completed an online survey that consisted of measures of perfectionism, stress reactivity, and depression, one month apart. Cross-lagged analysis results showed that personal standards perfectionism predicted later prolonged stress reactivity but not depression at time 2. Self-critical perfectionism predicted later depression but not prolonged stress reactivity at time 2. Rather, prolonged stress reactivity at time 1 predicted self-critical perfectionism at time 2. Findings suggest that perfectionism dimensions are distinct in creating a dysregulated stress process. Future studies could incorporate other stress-related variables (e.g., coping) to further explicate the stress-generation process, in conjunction with stress reactivity.
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AAQ2, CD-RISC 10, and PSRS have good validity and reliability for measuring psychological flexibility, resilience, and stress reactivity.
“which exhibits strong convergent and discriminant validity, while also being robust to social desirability bias.”
From Enhanced Stress-Resilience Training (ESRT) for graduate-entry medical students: a randomised-controlled, mixed-method investigation (2025) · cites this paper as [44]
The Method > Measures passage says the PSRS prolonged-reactivity subscale assesses stress reactivity and has supported convergent validity and internal reliability. The paper does not establish the claimed properties of AAQ2 or CD-RISC 10, nor does it report discriminant validity or resistance to social-desirability bias for PSRS. No page numbers were available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Suh, H., Liou, P.-Y., Jeong, J., & Kim, S. Y.
- Affiliations
- Korea University (KR)
- Pusan National University (KR)
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Suh, Hanna
- Venue
- Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
- Published
- 2022-11-07
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 54-68
- ISSN
- 0894-9085 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-6563
- PMC
- PMC9640895
- OpenAlex
- W4308392837
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 2.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Perfectionism, Procrastination, Anxiety Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders
- Keywords
- perfectionism, depression, personal standards perfectionism, self-critical perfectionism, stress dysregulation, causal direction, vulnerability to psychopathology
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