Self-Critical Perfectionism, Daily Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Stress Generation: a Four-Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This study of 145 community adults examined heightened interpersonal-sadness sensitivity as a mediator of the relationship between self-critical (SC) perfectionism and stress generation four years later. Participants completed questionnaires assessing perfectionism dimensions at Time 1, baseline depressive symptoms at Time 1 and Year 3, daily negative social interactions and affect for 14 consecutive days at Month 6 and Year 3, and a contextual-threat stress interview at Year 4. Path analyses indicated that SC perfectionism predicted daily interpersonal-sadness sensitivity (i.e., greater increases in sadness in response to increases in negative social interactions) between Month 6 and Year 3. This, in turn, explained why individuals with higher SC perfectionism had greater interpersonal stress generation four years later, controlling for the effects of depressive symptoms. Findings also demonstrated that responding to negative social interactions with broader negative affect or accumulated negative social interactions did not mediate the prospective relation between SC perfectionism and interpersonal stress generation. SC perfectionism was not related to Year 4 noninterpersonal stress generation or independent stress. Findings highlight the importance of targeting interpersonal-sadness sensitivity in order to reduce the propensity of SC perfectionistic individuals to generate negative interpersonal life events several years into the future.