The mediating role of coping styles in the association between perfectionism and learned helplessness in students’ population

Abstract

IntroductionDuring the past two decades, the construct of perfectionism has attracted much attention in the clinical field and in the psychology of personality. ObjectiveTherefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of coping styles between perfectionism and learned helplessness (LH). MethodThe present study was an ex-post-facto study with a perfectionist group and a normal group each of which was divided into two factions (Problem-focused coping (PFC) and Emotion-focused coping (EFC)). The statistical population of this survey included all the students of Shahid Beheshti University during the academic year of the 2019–2020 semesters from which 58 students were selected via purposeful sampling as the final sample. Robert Hill's perfectionism scale, his LH scale, and Billings and Moss (1981) coping strategies were administered to 58 Iranian male college students. Factorial ANOVA analyses were conducted. ResultsResults indicated that the perfectionist group had a higher LH than the normal group. In addition, the PFC-style perfectionist group reported less LH than the EFC-style perfectionist group (F = 4.8, F = 5.4, F = 4.9, P < 0.05). These findings are consistent with most previous studies of coping styles and LH. ConclusionThe results of the study would suggest that teaching PFC styles to perfectionists can prevent LH.