Perfectionism and acceptance: perspective taking and implicit beliefs

Abstract

research examines associations between perfectionism and acceptance for the self and towards others, alongside their link with psychological health. Reported beliefs are compared with underlying implicit beliefs, as measured by response latencies on the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP; Barnes-Holmes et al., 2006). Ninetynine native English-language speaking university students completed measures of selforiented and other-oriented perfectionism, unconditional self-acceptance, acceptance of others and general health; together with the IRAP computer task. Self-perfectionism scores were observed to be significantly higher than other-perfectionism scores on both explicit and implicit measures. Acceptance of others was significantly higher than selfacceptance on explicit measures; however the two were non-significantly different as recorded by the IRAP. This suggests that participants may have under-reported selfacceptance levels or over-reported their acceptance of others. Possible reasons for this are explored. In addition, all explicit measures demonstrated no significant associations with implicit findings; meaning that participants‟ responses to the assessment tasks appeared to be driven by different processes. Low levels of explicit self-acceptance were the biggest predictor of psychological distress. As such, this research provides further support for the move towards acceptance-based strategies in the treatment of clinical perfectionism.