Big Five Personality Factors, Perceived Parenting Styles, and Perfectionism among Academically Gifted Students

Abstract

This study focuses on the examination of Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles in predicting positive and negative perfectionism among academically gifted students. Through cross-sectional random sampling procedures, 448 form four students (16 years old) involved particularly those who scored straight A’s in Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR). The participants responded to three related instruments, comprises of the International Personality Item Pool, Parental Authority Questionnaire, and Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. The study utilized K-Mean cluster analysis to cluster the perfectionism of the students. Stepwise multiple regressions used to determine the role of Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles in predicting positive and negative perfectionism. The findings showed 259 (57.8%), 136 (30.4%), and 53 (11.8%) students were clustered to dysfunctional/neurotic perfectionistic, healthy/normal perfectionistic, and non-perfectionistic, respectively. The results of two separate stepwise multiple regression analyses found that positive perfectionism was significantly predicted by several factors including paternal authoritative style, openness to experiences, maternal authoritative style, and conscientiousness. On the other hand, negative perfectionism was significantly predicted by maternal authoritarian style, neuroticism, and paternal authoritarian style. As predicted, permissive parenting style showed no contribution in predicting positive and negative perfectionism. Implications, limitations, and recommendation of the study are addressed briefly in this research. In fact, this is one of the first empirical studies of perfectionism relating to Big Five personality factors and perceived parenting styles among academically gifted students in Malaysia.