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Almost Perfect Scale, assessments, convergent validity, dysfunctional, dysfunctional attitudes survey, Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, perfectionism, psychology, reality check, research
Recent events conspired to point out to me with unavoidable clarity that I am a perfectionist, so I’m working on learning more about that. Unfortunately, for me and many others, perfectionism represents seriously dysfunctional attitudes that cause distress.
Of course, I asked myself,
Am I really a perfectionist?
Well, there’s a psychological scale for that! Actually, several of them. Nice validated instruments, some easier to comprehend than others, but it takes a lot of reading for full interpretation. I didn’t go quite that far – sometimes there are self-scoring details with interpretations, but good luck finding them.
I’m not a health professional, just applying my research training to interpreting this information. I found a nice collection of instruments with just a little searching. The difficult thing about self-administering these assessments is that I know what the “right” answer is, but I have to give an honest answer, and there’s no one to ask about anything that might be confusing. Another caution is that lacking context for comparison (e.g., what’s normal?) can make interpretation difficult to impossible. You have to dig into the academic literature if you want to get serious about interpretation.
But hey, let’s just take these tests anyway and see what they say!
Perfectionist? by anna jarske ✈, CC BY-NC-ND
The Almost Perfect Scale (Revised) is a 23-item instrument with 7-point Likert-like scales for each item (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and straight scoring, meaning that each Likert option corresponds to a number, and you just add ‘em up. This makes it very easy to both take and score; lower scores are more normal and very high scores are neurotic.
The APS measures three subscales: Standards, Order, and Discrepancy, where discrepancy is complicated to explain but means something like, “how far off center your expectations are” and to some degree also how upsetting this is to you. My scores were telltale:
- Standards: 48/49 = 98%
- Order: 24/28 = 86%
- Discrepancy: 70/84 = 83%
What can I say? I guess I’m a perfectionist after all. I’m pretty strict about order and neatness (true, although in many respects compensatory for ADD), but I’m ridiculous when it comes to what I expect of myself. The discrepancy score reinforces the overall not-goodness of my brand of self-reinforcing perfectionist behavior.
Next up, the more complicated assessment Dysfunctional Attitudes Survey, which comes in several flavors, and seven subscales which I found far more telling than a summative score. I scored right around the middle for approval, love, and entitlement, suggesting that those attitudes are pretty much normal. However…
I scored at the extreme high end for achievement (i.e., workaholic), and very high for perfectionism and autonomy as well. So not only do I feel that my self-worth is tied to achievement and I’m destructively perfectionistic about it, but I recognize that it’s all my fault and fixing it is up to me, which I therefore assume must mean all by myself. Technically, a high score on autonomy should be good, but I’ve found creative ways to make even that work against me. It’s a special talent.
Finally, we have the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, in a convenient online self-scoring test. As usual, the higher you score (raw numbers or percentiles) the worse the situation is…
- Organization: 4.5/5 = 90%
- Personal Standards: 4.7/5 = 94%
- Parental Expectations/Criticism: 3.6/5 = 72%
- Concern Over Mistakes: 5.7/5 = 114% (?!?)
The high score on organization from the APS was confirmed, as was the overwhelmingly high standards from the DAS. In researchese, it’s called convergent validity, meaning, that ain’t no lie. But 114% on concern over mistakes? Is that a mistake? Now I’m going to worry about it – I must have screwed up the test somehow… 
So what does all this suggest I should do? I plan to start with a little more reading up on perfectionism, especially since I don’t have a therapy appointment for a few weeks. Maybe by then I’ll have a better idea of how to move forward.
Because it was the most convenient, I took the “Frost” test. Sadly, my scores were more extreme than yours and my “concern over mistakes” earned me 6/5…. an even more mind-boggling number. Why am i commenting here? Because I think other bipolar perfectionists like me might relate to the fact that the tipping point of hyper-perfectionism can take us over the top into under-achievement. Fear of making a mistake or not living up to personal goals or expectations can leave some of us terrified to try. If we don’t try, we can’t fail, right?
So, whereas you, DeeDee have achieved success in your field, I’m still beating myself up that I haven’t gone to graduate school…. 20 years later. I’m also bipolar 2 and, having just lived through a week of hypomania, I find myself on the other side now, sliding into inertia and dullness. Feeling a bit like the character Robert DeNiro played, at the the end of the movie “Awakenings.” “Where is my mind? It was so agile? Nothing I can do today can match what i could do a few days ago so i shouldn’t even try….” Years of things left undone, unfinished, shelved for a sunnier day, a longer period of “acceptable” ability has done nothing good for my self-concept and, although the people around me don’t always understand why, I’ve yet to do anything significant that I can feel proud of.
People who meet me don’t think “this person is mentally ill” any more than they do you, i don’t think. However, mental illness has left a indelible mark on my personal history and a lot of it has manifested as stymieing hyper-perfectionism. Like your over-compensation in the area of organization because of ADD, response to the changeable nature of our moods and abilities, i believe, can lead to neurotic perfectionistic behaviors….
And, contrary to what the leading questions on this particular test implies, It’s not always “our parents” who instill these unachievable standards within us, but more often our inner parents always wondering how to deal with their problem child. The one who could think circles around mere mortals one day but couldn’t get out of bed the next.
I wonder if DBT could be helpful in cases like mine?
I think with bipolar 2 and what you get out of hypomania in terms of overall performance, that just exacerbates the perfectionism issues because sometimes you actually can live up to those insanely high standards. But only sometimes, and at what cost?
My rationale for doing risky things is that I know I would regret it later. Terrifying as it is to think about (and it’s seriously freaking me out right now) my next job search, I know I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t try to do what I originally set out to, and go for a professor position. I feel so certain that I’ll fail at it that it feels like it rips me apart, but I can’t not try.
But I also know the sense of being so competitive in perfectionism that I won’t try if I can’t be the best. In some regards, it’s good for me, because it helps me refrain from getting involved in too many (more) things when I already have too much…
Now this took research, as well as a great flash of brilliance. =)
I’m afraid of how I’d score on these levels myself, especially right now.
Research is my business! Brilliance, I only pretend at.
I was just too curious – I mean, why worry about this (too) if it’s not really an issue? But it obviously is, and I didn’t need the assessments to tell me that. I just didn’t want to admit it…
I think it’s pretty common for people with ADD to be perfectionists…and many people with ADD won’t start/finish projects because they aren’t done perfectly (but then they may not get done at all, which logic tells us is worse….but takes a lot of practice to get over this!)
My dad (also has ADD) says that ADDers tend toward two extremes: complete disorganization, or control-freaky neatness. He’s the former, I’m the latter. I don’t think the ADD has anything to do with perfectionism for me, but it has a LOT to do with the starting/finishing projects thing.
In fact, I’m coming to believe that it’s one of the root causes of so much worry. I could never do the things my parents expected of me, and my mom was always saying how I never finished anything. Now I massively overcompensate, refusing to start new projects ’til old ones are finished up and always, always concerned about being seen as flaky. I worry excessively about completing what I start, even if I shouldn’t bother. Because dammit, I do finish things, all the time!
ugh. stressful.
I used to be over-the-top perfectionistic, until my breakdown in 2000 (which had nothing to do with perfectionism), from which I have never recovered. Being unable to exercise my perfectionistic rigors has been a great grief to me. Yes, I have plenty of legitimate reasons for not being able to attain my goals and aspirations, and blah blah blah…it doesn’t hurt any less. My take-home lesson? If you are a perfectionist, and you have the ability to go ahead and do most of what you set for yourself, go at it, because you just never know how much time you’ll have to get it all done, and done right. Hopefully you’ll have many imperfect years in which to practice perfectionism. Learn to laugh at your perfectionistic grumblings, recognize the anxieties and tell them to take a hike, but most of all, appreciate your abilities and revel in them, because you just never know.
Thanks so much, Soul – I know how well you know this rather unkind mindset. I can’t even tell when I’m being a perfectionist, because it’s mostly an issue of my standards being so out of whack. I’m not trying to make things perfect, just good enough, but no one will tell me what’s good enough and I can’t figure it out for myself. It turns out that my personal standards for “good enough” are flat-out crazy but I had no good way to know that. I think those standards are predicated on “harmless” comments from people I looked up to, who had no idea that I was going to warp their words that way…
Boy do I know that one: the off-hand comment taken so hard by the super-sensitive soul. My mother used to tell me that I needed to grow some skin. I suppose that might have been because she had flayed the one I had….so I spent the rest of my life trying to prove I’m ok, maybe even good. Bleah.
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An excellent piece Dee. I have epilepsy myself. A benign tumour in my right frontal lobe and a lesion in my left temporal lobe. Result? Multi tasking correctly is impossible, and my emotional balance is somewhat skew wiff! I can empathise with a lot of what you have written,,and look forward to continuing to follow you.
Thanks! I feel fortunate not to have epilepsy, although in many respects that would seem more socially acceptable. Interesting that some of the cognitive constraints are similar, though!
Prior to my dx, one of my friends was telling me about taking lamotrigine for mood swings, and although it’s an anticonvulsant, it made sense to her because a mood swing felt like a sort of brain spasm to her.
Not so obvious for me, though lamotrigine is one of the best things to happen to me in years!