Healthy and Unhealthy Perfectionists Among Academically Gifted Chinese Students in Hong Kong: Do Different Classification Schemes Make a Difference?

Abstract

This study investigated the identification and distribution of perfectionist types with a sample of 111 academically gifted Chinese students aged 17 to 20 in Hong Kong. Three approaches to classification were employed. Apart from the direct questioning approach, the rational approach and the clustering approach classified students using their scores on three constructs of the revised Almost Perfect Scale, which included high standards, order, and discrepancy between standards and performance. Despite the fact that the different approaches yielded different classification results, all three approaches generated profiles of three perfectionist types interpretable as nonperfectionists, healthy perfectionists, and unhealthy perfectionists, suggesting that healthy perfectionists tended to outnumber unhealthy perfectionists and nonperfectionists. Implications of the findings for working with perfectionist students and future research on perfectionism and perfectionist types are discussed.