Cultural differences in perfectionism: A comparison of African American and White college students

Researchers examined possible cultural, ethnic, or racial differences regar ding perfectionism. A sample of 417 African American and White college stud ents completed two different perfectionism scales with the same name Multid imensional Perfectionism Scale (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990; Hewitt and Flett, 1991) but which measure different dimensions of perfectio nism. The results indicated statistically significant differences between A frican American and White students on four subscales, with African American students scoring higher on Parental Expectations and Other-Oriented Perfec tionism, and lower on Concern over Mistakes and Parental Criticism.