Perfectionism and cognitive-behavioural processes in daily work: Implications for self-related perceptions and emotions

ABSTRACTWork-related perfectionism is widespread among employees. Nevertheless, it is largely unclear how perfectionism might impact employees in their daily work. In line with whole trait theory, we took a dynamic perspective to investigate how daily fluctuations in both dimensions of work-related perfectionism (i.e., perfectionistic strivings and concerns) relate to an employee’s daily planning, procrastination, and self-blaming at work. We also examined relationships between these cognitions and behaviours and employees’ work-related self-efficacy and feelings of shame and guilt. During two workweeks, 78 employees completed daily surveys that assessed perfectionistic strivings and concerns as well as planning, procrastination, and self-blaming during work, and work-related self-efficacy, shame, and guilt at the end of the workday. Multilevel path modelling of data from 514 workdays showed that daily work-related perfectionistic strivings related positively to planning and daily work-related perfectionistic concerns related positively to self-blaming. Self-blaming served as a mechanism linking perfectionistic concerns with shame and guilt. Our findings show that both perfectionism dimensions relate differently to employees’ cognitions, behaviours, and emotions in their daily work. Thereby, our study helps to better understand why perfectionism can be both beneficial and detrimental for employees.KEYWORDS: perfectionismplanningprocrastinationself-blamingshameguilt Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data Availability StatementStudy participants did not provide consent that their data will be available publicly. Data are available for interested researchers upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.Notes1. We added the paths from perfectionistic strivings to procrastination and self-blaming and from perfectionistic concerns to planning to our model to examine the unique relationships of perfectionistic strivings and concerns, respectively (see Stoeber & Gaudreau, Citation2017). This approach is in line with previous research proposing and finding support for different processes and outcomes associated with perfectionistic strivings and concerns (see Flaxman et al., Citation2018; Mohr et al., Citation2022).2. Data used in this study has been collected within a larger research project. Within this broader data collection, we aimed at investigating several separate research questions. The morning survey assessed constructs that are not relevant for examining this study’s research question. Therefore, we only used daily data from the noon and end-of-workday surveys and did not include data from the morning surveys.3. As the comparatively high value for the SRMRbetween indicates, the measurement model does not fit the data well at the between-person level. When specifying the measurement model only at the within-person level using person-mean centred items, it shows a reasonable fit to the data, χ2(835) = 1266.16, p < .001, CFI = 0.92, TLI = 0.91, RMSEA = .03, SRMRwithin = .05. Because all our hypotheses are at the within-person level of analysis, the inadequate fit at the between-person level does not threaten the validity of our results.4. Without controlling for the baseline levels of the outcome variables, the model shows a very good fit to the data, χ2(14) = 16.03, p < .001, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.97, RMSEA = .02. Removing the control variables does not change the results with respect to the hypotheses tests.