Affective state dependence and relative trait stability of perfectionism in sleep disturbances

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the degree of absolute change, relative stability and state dependence of trait perfectionism in sleep disturbances in a sample of university students. METHOD: Participants completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale and two items concerning sleep difficulties. The mean age at T0 (baseline) was 19.59 years (SD = 1.61, range = 17-25) and 62.5% of the sample were female. RESULTS: Absolute changes in self-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism were found. Relative stability was found for all perfectionism dimensions. Prior and concurrent sleep disturbances explained a significant amount of variance in perfectionism. Controlling for the effects of sleep measures, prior selforiented perfectionism and other-oriented perfectionism were the only significant predictors of subsequent self-oriented perfectionism and otheroriented perfectionism, at T1 and T2. Difficulties falling asleep at T1 and socially-prescribed perfectionism at T0 were significant predictors of socially-prescribed perfectionism at T1. CONCLUSION: Despite significant changes in perfectionism mean scores over the follow-up, the correlation analyses demonstrated that participants remained quite stable in regard to their relative levels of perfectionism. As concurrent difficulties initiating sleep also predicted concurrent socially-prescribed perfectionism, this seems to be one dimension of perfectionism with trait-state characteristics.