1. Introduction
Perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by the search for faultlessness and the establishment of very high levels of performance along with excessively critical self-evaluations [
1,
2,
3]. This integrative definition encompasses a set of very strict self-imposed demands about what individuals believe they should become [
4,
5]. Other definitions have noted that perfectionism is a multi-dimensional concept composed of both intrapersonal and interpersonal traits [
6]. For instance, Hewitt et al. [
7] identified three main dimensions of perfectionism: self-oriented perfectionism, which involves self-requirements to be perfect, other-oriented perfectionism, which concerns demands for others to be perfect, and socially prescribed perfectionism, which involves perceptions that others require the self to be perfect. Other studies underline that perfectionism is composed of two traits: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns [
8,
9,
10]. Perfectionistic strivings have been suggested to be related to adaptive outcomes, such as positive affect, motivational orientations, hopes of success, etc., but perfectionistic concerns have been associated with maladaptive outcomes [
8,
9,
10,
11].
Although this pursuit of excellence has its adaptive facet, many studies have linked perfectionism to psychopathology, concluding that perfectionism is a transdiagnostic risk and a maintaining factor for multiple psychological disorders [
10,
11,
12,
13,
14]. From the transdiagnostic perspective, perfectionism is a common psychological process in different disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and eating disorders, and also favors co-occurrence among them [
11]. Research on how perfectionism and its dimensions affect the field of psychopathology has increased in recent years. However, most of the investigations have been conducted with adolescent and adult populations [
13,
15,
16]. Perfectionism in children has not been sufficiently explored in spite of being a critical stage for the development of perfectionism traits [
1,
5].
Children develop perfectionist traits through the interaction between their personal characteristics and their social environment’s demands [
17]. Therefore, children set high standards of excellence on themselves according to their school and family environment demands and selective reinforcement of their achievements by adults [
18,
19]. Consequently, many multidimensional measures of perfectionism in children do not include the other-oriented perfectionism dimension since, according to the developmental perspective, children are not prepared to demand excellence from others [
4,
18,
20,
21]. The most widely used and supported of these is the Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (CAPS), which conceptualizes child perfectionism based on two dimensions: Socially Prescribed Perfectionism (SPP) and Self-oriented perfectionism. Socially Prescribed Perfectionism includes an interpersonal component referring to environment demands. Self-oriented perfectionism (SOP) involves an intrapersonal dimension that implies the motivation to be perfectionist and self-critical [
20,
21]. Recent research has proposed a three-factorial model composed of Socially Prescribed Perfectionism (SPP) and two dimensions of SOP, which include Self-oriented perfectionism-Striving (SOP-Striving) and Self-oriented perfectionism-Critical (SOP-Critical) [
22]. The SOP-Striving and SOP-Critical dimensions represent, respectively, the adaptive and maladaptive facets of SOP, as SOP-Striving showed positive correlations with parental expectations and academic achievement. SOP-Critical was positively associated with negative affect, parental criticism, anxiety, and depression [
9,
10,
22]. These three dimensions are related to each other, showing small correlations between SOP-Critical and SOP-Strivings but moderate correlations between these two dimensions and SPP [
22].
Numerous studies have examined the level of perfectionism in terms of gender and age. In general, results have shown that boys have a higher level of perfectionism than girls [
20,
21,
23,
24]. When distinguishing among dimensions, some studies found that males scored higher than females in intrapersonal perfectionism (especially SOP-Critical), that is, boys have higher standards of excellence, but the gender differences were not significant when concerning interpersonal perfectionism (SPP). This indicates that both perceive similar levels of perfectionist demands from their environment [
18,
22,
24,
25]. Regarding age, some studies suggest that perfectionism is higher at younger ages, especially socially prescribed perfectionism, due to greater parental demands in the first years of primary education [
18,
22,
23]. However, the literature indicates that no significant differences by age have been found since perfectionism is a stable personality trait over time [
24,
26,
27,
28].
In relation to psychological problems, perfectionist children, who are constantly dealing with both internal and external pressures, show feelings of sadness, anger, futility, distress, embarrassment, a negative self-concept, dissatisfaction with themselves, and blame [
12,
29]. Research has reported that child maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism are related to psychopathological disorders such as depression [
7,
14,
15,
29,
30], anxiety disorders [
7,
12,
14,
31], obsessive-compulsive disorder [
32], and eating disorders [
33], among others. If we consider the perfectionism dimensions separately, research reveals that SOP (specially SOP-Critical) interacts with social stress to predict anxiety and with achievement stress and social stress to predict depression in children [
6,
7,
30]. Unlike adults, SPP in children is associated with both positive and negative affectivity, yet significant correlations have been found with anxiety, depression, social stress, anger, and interpersonal hostility [
7,
34,
35]. Thus, both dimensions of perfectionism were associated with psychopathology outcomes across studies. Although research on child perfectionism has focused on its negative aspects, some studies have also found positive relationships between self-oriented perfectionism and psychosocial variables such as social support, empathy, and other prosocial behaviors [
13,
35].
The influence of perfectionism on children’s psychological difficulties and strengths has been scarcely explored. Therefore, the present study aimed to: 1) describe the level of perfectionism in a sample of Spanish children, 2) examine differences in perfectionism by gender and age, 3) analyze differences in emotional symptoms, behavioral problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, total difficulties, and prosocial behavior based on the perfectionism level, and 4) predict psychological strengths and difficulties from the perfectionism dimensions. Based on the previous literature [
21,
23,
24,
25], we hypothesize that gender differences will be found, but not by age. Furthermore, we expect children with high perfectionism to show greater psychological difficulties and lower prosocial behavior than low perfectionism children [
7,
14,
30,
35]. Lastly, we consider the SOP-Critical and SPP dimensions to be the most predictive of psychological difficulties, especially emotional symptoms and behavioral problems, respectively [
7,
13,
27,
35].
4. Discussion
The goal of the present study consisted of evaluating the level of perfectionism in a community sample of Spanish children from 7 to 11 years old. In addition, possible gender and age differences in child perfectionism and the relationships between perfectionism domains and psychopathology were explored. As a novelty, the contribution of perfectionism in the children’s prosocial behavior was also analyzed.
Based on the multi-dimensional analysis of perfectionism, it was observed that the SOP-Striving was the most developed factor in the participants, which implies that commitment, effort, and self-demanding behaviors predominated, especially at the school level [
25]. When the sample was divided into groups according to percentiles, about half of the children had a medium perfectionism level and more than a quarter belonged to the high perfectionism group. In this high perfectionism group, the most characteristic trait was the SPP, which confirmed that these children were more influenced by the expectations of others, specifically their family and teachers [
18,
19]. The SOP-Critical trait was the least prevalent in all three levels of perfectionism and was expressed mainly through anger at themselves for making mistakes [
7,
25,
29]. Therefore, as in other similar studies, the adaptive facet of child perfectionism predominated in this sample [
24,
25].
The results supported our hypothesis showing significant differences in perfectionism, according to gender. In line with previous literature, males scored higher in the perfectionism measures than females [
18,
20,
21,
23,
24]. Some studies that examined gender differences in each dimension found significant differences only in SOP [
22,
24], which showed that boys set elevated self-imposed standards when compared to girls, or only in SPP [
20,
21] in which boys reported higher requirements to be perfect from authority figures than girls. In contrast, our data showed that boys scored significantly higher in all perfectionism dimensions, which indicated that boys are more self-demanding, self-critical, and perceive a greater perfectionist demand in their environment than do girls [
18,
23]. Furthermore, the effect size of these differences was larger than in previous studies [
24]. These gender differences may also be influenced by cultural and age factors, as international studies with adolescents and adult samples found no difference between men and women in perfectionism levels [
45,
46]. Future studies should address the relationship between perfectionism and these psychosocial variables [
13].
In relation to age, it was hypothesized that no differences would be found between younger and older children. According to previous studies, no significant association was obtained between the level of perfectionism and age nor between perfectionism and the school level [
24,
26,
28]. Regarding subscales, SPP was higher in the younger children (7–9 years) and SOP-Critical was higher in the older group (10–11 years). These results were also obtained in other studies conducted with children and adolescents where SPP decreased significantly over time [
22,
47] and SOP-Critical was higher in students enrolled in higher grades [
18,
22,
23]. These findings may be explained because younger children perceive greater pressure to be perfectionists from adults. However, over time, these demands diminish and children set high standards for themselves and are more self-critical [
18].
As expected, the presence of elevated levels of perfectionism was associated with psychological difficulties in children [
7,
11,
14]. Specifically, these children were more likely to suffer from emotional and behavioral problems and adjustment difficulties than children with low perfectionism. Moreover, children in the medium perfectionism group showed a risk of emotional problems, which confirms the close relationship between internalizing symptoms and perfectionism [
21,
29,
30]. In this study, both the SPP and SOP-Critical dimensions were significantly and directly related to emotional and behavioral problems, hyperactivity, and total difficulties. In contrast, the SOP-Striving was associated with fewer peer problems. These outcomes are consistent with previous research, which suggests that SOP-Critical corresponds to the maladaptive component and SOP-Striving to the adaptive component of intrapersonal perfectionism [
9,
10,
22].
This study examined the interaction between perfectionism dimensions and children’s psychological strengths and difficulties. As previously hypothesized, the SOP-Critical was the most predictive perfectionism subscale for psychological difficulties in children, especially for boys [
18,
22,
27]. Similarly, children with a higher level of self-critical perfectionism showed greater emotional symptoms as they tend to feel guilt, sadness, anger, and remorse when they make mistakes, which, again, highlighted the involvement of this dimension in the development of anxious and depressive symptomatology [
14,
15,
29,
30]. On the other hand, behavioral and peer problems were found to be more likely in boys with low SOP-Striving and high SPP. This suggests that children who have low standards of excellence, but perceive high demands on their environment, are more likely to exhibit hostility toward others and antisocial behaviors, likely due to their frustration by not meeting the others’ expectations [
7,
29,
35].
Regarding psychological strengths, prosocial behavior was related to the SOP-Striving and SPP variables. On the one hand, prosocial behavior correlated indirectly with SPP, which indicated that behaviors such as empathy, kindness, helping others, and offering emotional support were lower in children with more socially prescribed perfectionism. On the other hand, it was found that older girls who scored high in SOP-Striving showed greater prosocial behaviors. These results are consistent with those obtained in the study of Stoeber et al. [
35] in which the SOP displayed positive relationships with altruism, interest in others, affiliative humor, and prosocial goals. The SPP showed a consistent pattern of negative relationships with these prosocial behaviors.
Given the cross-sectional nature of the current study, some limitations should be noted when inferring conclusions from this research. The sample comprised children from a single school, which makes it difficult to generalize the results because of the risk of possible bias. Furthermore, data were collected through self-report measures. Thus, future research should include parent and teacher reports, or other assessment techniques such as interviewing. In addition, participants belonged to a community sample. Hence, current findings should be replicated in specific clinical samples [
22]. Lastly, it is recommended to conduct longitudinal studies that support the relationships between perfectionism and children’s psychological strengths and difficulties [
14].