Impact of Perfectionism Type on the Career Self-Efficacy, Vocational Identity, and Interest Differentiation of College Students

Despite findings suggesting that perfectionism may have important implications for individuals' career development, little research has examined adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism within a career decision-making context. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of perfectionism type on the ipsative career self-efficacy, relative career self-efficacy, vocational identity, and interest differentiation of college students. Participants included 185 undergraduate students who volunteered to participate in a research pool in exchange for course credit. Score profiles on the Revised Almost Perfect Scale (APS-R) were used to categorize participants into groups of adaptive perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists; the Competencies and Self-Estimates scales of the Self-Directed Search (SDS) were used to measure ipsative and relative career self-efficacy, respectively; the Vocational Identity scale (VIS) of the My Vocational Situation (MVS) was used to measure vocational identity; and the Iachan Differentiation Index score from the SDS was used to measure interest differentiation. A one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance found that perfectionism type accounted for a significant amount of the total variance (9.8%) among the four dependent variables. Follow-up univariate analyses of variance and post-hoc pairwise comparisons found that both adaptive perfectionists and maladaptive perfectionists demonstrated greater levels of relative career self-efficacy than non-perfectionists, and that adaptive perfectionists demonstrated a greater level of vocational identity than both maladaptive perfectionists and non-perfectionists. No significant group differences of perfectionism type were identified with respect to ipsative career self-efficacy or interest differentiation. Results of this study support the relevance of perfectionism to career development, and limitations and implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.