Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Distinguishing self-oriented perfectionism-striving and self-oriented

perfectionism-critical in school-aged children: Divergent patterns of
perceived parenting, personal affect and school performance
Brenda C. Harvey ⁎, Amanda M. Moore, Richard Koestner
Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Avenue Dr. Penfield, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Parental expectations and criticism are associated with Self-Oriented Perfectionism-strivings (SOP-striving) and
Received 1 December 2016 Self-Oriented Perfectionism-critical (SOP-critical)1 respectively, when retrospectively examining parenting dur-
Received in revised form 24 February 2017 ing childhood, but have never been examined within an actual child sample. Similarly, the differential relations of
Accepted 28 February 2017
SOP-striving and SOP-critical to affect and academic achievement have rarely been tested within a child sample,
Available online xxxx
nor has the association of these parenting behaviors with these outcomes been explored. The present study
Keywords:
consisted of 203 children, aged 8 to 12. Results replicated previous findings within a child sample, indicating
Self-oriented perfectionism-striving that parental expectations are associated with SOP-striving (b = 0.29, p b 0.001), which is associated with aca-
Self-oriented perfectionism-criticism demic achievement (b = 0.30, p b 0.001), while parental criticism is associated with SOP-critical (b = 0.31,
Parental expectations p b 0.001), which is associated with negative affect (b = 0.28, p b 0.001). Moreover, the results reveal these par-
Parental criticism enting behaviors are related to children's affect and academic achievements, both directly and indirectly through
Affect perfectionism. The present investigation lends credence to the Social Expectations Model (Flett, Hewitt, Oliver, &
Academic achievement MacDonald, 2002) by providing evidence within the target population, and highlights the divergent patterns of
School-aged children
SOP-striving and SOP-critical.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perfectionism is a personality style that involves an individual
setting exceedingly high personal standards in an attempt to attain per-
fection, often accompanied with a tendency to be highly self-critical
(Rice, Lopez, & Vergara, 2005). According to Flett et al.'s (2002) Social
Expectations Model, children's perfectionism arises as a result of par-
ents having exceedingly high expectations for their children, as well
as being highly critical of them. This results in children developing per-
fectionism by internalizing these high standards, as well as the negative
self-evaluation. The self-oriented perfectionism-striving subscale (SOP-
striving) captures the adaptive side of perfectionism that is associated
with striving for perfection (O'Connor, Dixon, & Rasmussen, 2009). In
contrast, the self-oriented perfectionism-critical subscale (SOP-critical)
encompasses the maladaptive side of perfectionism, in which a person
⁎ Corresponding author at: McGill University, 1205 Avenue Dr. Penfield, Montreal,
Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada.
E-mail addresses: brenda.harvey2@mail.mcgill.ca (B.C. Harvey),
amanda.moore@mail.mcgill.ca (A.M. Moore), richard.koestner@mcgill.ca (R. Koestner).
1
SOP-striving refers to self-oriented perfectionism-striving subscale; SOP-critical refers
to self-oriented perfectionism-critical subscale.
is overly self-critical of their performance (O'Connor et al., 2009). The
two forms of perfectionism tend to be highly correlated, however,
when controlling for the overlap between the two forms, a positive
and negative form can be differentiated (Stoeber & Otto, 2006). Based
on the Social Expectations Model, one would expect SOP-striving to be
associated with the internalization of high parental expectations,
whereas SOP-critical would be associated with the internalization of
high parental criticism. Indeed, this is exactly what has been found.
Rice et al. (2005) conducted a study with 241 young adult partici-
pants, aged 18 to 22, where they retrospectively asked participants
about their experiences of parental criticism and expectations as chil-
dren. Results demonstrated parental expectations to be significantly
positively related to SOP-striving and parental criticism to be signifi-
cantly positively associated with SOP-critical. McArdle and Duda
(2008) successfully replicated Rice et al.'s (2005) findings in an adoles-
cent sample, aged 12 to 17. However, these authors also asked partici-
pants about their past childhood experiences with their parents, once
again making this a retrospective study. Moreover, while extending
this research into an adolescent sample was an important step, perfec-
tionism is already present by age 10 (Hewitt et al., 2002). Thus, if we

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 B.C. Harvey et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141
want to know whether or not expectations and criticism influence a
child's development of SOP-striving and SOP-critical respectively, we
must investigate this phenomenon at a much earlier age.
1. Perfectionism in Childhood
Stoeber (2012) noted that, even though past research has demon-
strated the importance of studying the development of perfectionism,
further research is needed. For the most part, research on the
development of perfectionism has neglected the positive form (Cook
& Kearney, 2014; Hewitt et al., 2002). Moreover, even though
perfectionism is present by age 10 (Hewitt et al., 2002), a lot of research
on the development of perfectionism has employed adult samples,
requiring participants to report retrospectively about childhood
experiences, opening the door to potential biases (Rice et al., 2005;
Speirs-Neumeister, 2004). Furthermore, most of the studies that have
employed younger samples had only adolescent participants, neglecting
the need to account for younger children (Hewitt et al., 2002; McArdle &
Duda, 2008). One exception is Cook and Kearney (2014), who investi-
gated perfectionism in a child sample, aged 8 to 17; however, they failed
to report the mean levels of perfectionism for each age group involved,
making it unclear whether perfectionism was detected in children as
young as 8 years old. Moreover, these researchers failed to control for
the overlap between SOP-critical and SOP-striving in their findings,
which is the recommended protocol by Stoeber and Otto (2006), leav-
ing it uncertain whether both forms of perfectionism are present at an
early age and making it difficult to tease apart the differential relations
between the two forms of perfectionism and various outcomes.
The present study was designed to address these limitations of past
research by taking into account both the positive and negative form of
perfectionism and fully exploring the levels of both in a sample of youn-
ger children, aged 8 to 12.
2. Affect and Academic Achievement
Another aim of this study was to investigate how SOP-striving and
SOP-critical differentially relate to affect and academic achievement in
children. With regards to affect, SOP-critical is consistently related to
worse affective experiences. In contrast, SOP-striving is only sometimes
positively related to affective experiences in certain contexts when con-
trolling for the overlap with SOP-critical in adolescents and young
adults (Damian et al., 2013; Stoeber & Otto, 2006). Within child sam-
ples, literature examining depressed and anxious affect has similarly
shown maladaptive perfectionism to be positively associated (see
Morris & Lomax, 2014 for a review). However, most of this literature fo-
cused on comparing socially prescribed perfectionism, where one feels
standards are imposed upon them, with self-oriented perfectionism
(SOP) without separating the critical and striving aspects as recom-
mended by O'Connor et al. (2009). This results in SOP sometimes show-
ing positive relations with negative affects such as depression and
anxiety (Asseraf & Vaillancourt, 2015; DiBartolo & Varner, 2012;
Morris & Lomax, 2014), which may be due solely to the critical aspects
of the general SOP construct. As such, more research is needed exploring
the relations between SOP-striving and SOP-critical with affect in chil-
dren. A better understanding of how these early differences in affective
experiences develop would allow us to gauge how ingrained these pat-
terns are and to determine the age at which an intervention would be
the most effective.
In contrast, the majority of previous research investigating the
relation between perfectionism and academic performance has demon-
strated SOP-striving to consistently be associated with greater academic
achievement, whereas the relation between academic performance and
SOP-critical is less well understood due to mixed findings in previous
research (see Stoeber, 2012 for a review). However, even within studies
where SOP-critical was found to have a positive relation to academic
achievement (Rice & Slaney, 2002), SOP-striving had a much stronger
137
relation compared to SOP-critical. It is important to note that these stud-
ies were all conducted in adolescent or young adult samples, leaving it
unclear how perfectionism relates to academic achievement during
childhood.
Given their relation to perfectionism, parental expectations and crit-
icism would be expected to at least be indirectly related to affect and ac-
ademic achievement. However, it is also possible that perceptions of
parents having high expectations for success, and being very critical, re-
late to these child outcomes directly as well. While this has never before
been examined, theoretically, parents pushing their children to succeed
by setting high standards for them, should relate positively to their
child's academic success, as children push themselves to meet these
standards, while simultaneously resulting in negative affect due to
experiencing increased pressure. In contrast, parents being highly criti-
cal of their children might negatively impact their affect and academic
achievement, as they feel they will never be good enough for their par-
ents. Therefore, the final goal of this paper was to examine the direct
and indirect effects of parental expectations and criticism on children's
affect and academic achievement.
3. The Present Study
The present study investigated how parental expectations and criti-
cism can foster a certain form of perfectionism. Based on previous re-
search (McArdle & Duda, 2008; Rice et al., 2005), we expected to find
parental expectations to be associated with SOP-striving and parental
criticism with SOP-critical. Additionally, this study aimed to fully ex-
plore the levels of perfectionism present in a child sample and consider
the possible effect of child age on findings. Given that perfectionism is
present by age 10 (Hewitt et al., 2002), we expected there might be
higher levels in older children within our sample.
Moreover, the present study aimed to extend previous research re-
lating SOP-striving and SOP-critical to academic achievement and affect
to a younger sample. In line with previous research on maladaptive per-
fectionism, we expected SOP-critical to be related to negative affect in
childhood, while SOP-striving was expected to either be negatively re-
lated or unrelated. In addition, we expected SOP-striving to be positively
related to academic achievement, while it was unclear what relation
SOP-critical would have to children's academic achievement.
Finally, the relation between parental expectations and criticism
with children's affect and academic achievement was investigated. We
expected parental expectations to have a strong positive relation to ac-
ademic achievement, but a negative relation to affect. Moreover, we ex-
pected parental criticism to have a negative relation to both children's
affect and academic achievement. Furthermore, we expected these rela-
tions to be at least partially explained by children's perfectionism.
4. Methods
4.1. Participant characteristics2
203 children (56.7% female) were recruited from four elementary
schools to participate in the present study. Children were in grades 3
to 6 and aged 8 to 12 years old (mean = 9.83).
4.2. Procedure
Children were escorted from their classrooms in groups and brought
to the computer lab within the school to complete the questionnaires on
Qualtrix, which took between 30 and 45 min. At least two research
2
107 parents (68.22% mothers; Mage = 40.14) also participated in the current study. On
average, parents were married (77.57%), of European decent (41.1%), had completed high
school or done some college (61.7%) and had a household income between $50,000 and
$100,000 (52.8%).
138 B.C. Harvey et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141

Table 1 Table 3
Descriptive statistics of study variables. Partial correlations of all variables with both types of perfectionism, controlling for the op-
posite type of perfectionism.
Mean SD Min Max
SOP-striving SOP-critical
SOP-striving 3.26 0.63 1.33 4.00
SOP-critical 1.85 0.77 1.00 4.00 1. Parental expectations 0.27⁎⁎⁎ 0.15⁎
Parental expectations 3.94 1.94 1.71 6.84 2. Parental criticism 0.03 0.33⁎⁎⁎
Parental criticism 1.84 0.92 1.09 4.35 3. Positive affect 0.14a −0.10
Positive affect 3.57 0.43 1.00 4.00 4. Negative affect 0.01 0.25⁎⁎
Negative affect 2.10 0.68 1.00 4.00 5. Academic achievement 0.30⁎⁎⁎ 0.07
Academic achievement 79.28 9.22 51.00 95.00 a
p b 0.10.
⁎ p b 0.05.
⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.

Table 2
Mean levels of perfectionism by age group. 4.3.4. Child affect
Children rated their general affect using a 9-item scale of affect
Age SOP-striving SOP-critical
(Emmons, 1992), which included four positive (e.g. “happy”) and five
Mean SD Mean SD negative (e.g. “unhappy”) items. In order to be more appropriate for
8 3.29 0.71 1.91 0.92 young children, “depressed” was changed to the more age appropriate
9 3.19 0.65 1.89 0.670 term “sad”. Items were rated on a scale from 1 “almost never” to 4 “a
10 3.17 0.61 1.64 0.64
lot of the time” when asked how often they felt like this. Within the cur-
11 3.42 0.61 1.93 0.89
12 3.30 0.62 2.08 0.80 rent sample, positive affect (α = 0.61) and negative affect (α = 0.74)
had adequate reliability.

assistants were always present, along with the principal investigator, to 4.3.5. Academic achievement data
answer any questions the children had. Children's report cards with grades ranging from 0 to 100 were
obtained at the end of the school year. Following the example of
4.3. Measures Stoeber and Rambow (2007), we averaged the overall primary language
(i.e. English) and mathematics grades for each student, which are the
4.3.1. Demographic information only two subjects students are required to pass in order to move on to
Children were asked to indicate their age and gender. the next grade.

4.3.2. Child and adolescent perfectionism scale-14 (CAPS-14) 5. Results

Child perfectionism was measured using the CAPS-14 (O'Connor et
al., 2009). The CAPS-14 is a 14-item scale, in which children were 5.1. Preliminary analyses
asked to rate on a scale from 1 “not at all like me” to 4 “very much like
me” how much the various statements described them. Example The means, standard deviations, minimums and maximums of the
items included “I try to be perfect in everything I do” and “I get variables of interest can be found in Table 1. According to Kline's
upset if there is even one mistake in my work”. Internal consistency of (2009) guidelines on data screening, the variables of interest were all
the CAPS-14 has been found to be between 0.72 and 0.75 for SOP- normally distributed. The mean level of SOP-striving was much higher
critical and 0.72 and 0.78 for SOP-striving (O'Connor et al., 2009). than for SOP-critical, and children were more likely to perceive high pa-
Following the recommendation made in O'Connor et al. (2009), SOP- rental expectations than criticism. Moreover, on average, children re-
critical was obtained by averaging the four items found in the self- ported higher levels of positive affect than negative affect and were
oriented perfectionism—critical subscale; and SOP-striving was doing reasonably well on academic achievement. Additionally, examin-
obtained by averaging the three items found in the self-oriented ing the mean level of each type of perfectionism by child age found in
perfectionism—striving subscale. Table 2, reveals that levels of SOP-striving are relatively constant and
present by age 8. In contrast, SOP-critical appears to follow a curvilinear
4.3.3. Parental expectations and criticism3 pattern, such that perfectionism levels start out moderate at age 8, but
Perceived parental expectations and criticism were measured using drop slightly at age 10 before increasing again at age 11. Indeed, a re-
the “socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP)” items from the CAPS gression analysis confirmed a significant quadratic relation between
(O'Connor et al., 2009) for expectations and the parental criticism sub- age and SOP-critical (b = 0.14, p = 0.05), but not SOP-striving. Howev-
scale of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS; Frost, er, this is a cross-sectional preliminary examination and thus, this
Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990) for criticism. A confirmatory factor
Table 4
analysis (CFA) was conducted using principal axis factoring and oblimin
Bivariate correlations of all study variables.
rotation to extract 4 factors from the combined CAPS and FMPS scales.
Individual items with cross-loadings above 0.4 were removed and a sec- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
ond CFA was conducted with the final items. The expected item loadings 1. SOP-striving –
across the 4 factors were obtained and cumulatively explained 68.6% of 2. SOP-critical 0.17⁎ –
the variance, suggesting the validity of the expectations and criticism 3. Parental expectations 0.30⁎⁎ 0.19⁎⁎ –
4. Parental criticism 0.09⁎⁎⁎ 0.34⁎⁎ 0.25⁎⁎ –
variables. The final solution retained 2 items for each expectations and 5. Positive affect 0.12a −0.09 −0.10 −0.17⁎ –
criticism, and the factor loadings were used to obtain optimally weight- 6. Negative affect 0.04 0.28⁎⁎ 0.04 0.21⁎ −0.40⁎⁎ –
ed factor scores. 7. Academic achievement 0.31⁎⁎ 0.13a −0.03 −0.13a 0.14a 0.02 –
a
p b 0.10.
3
Parents completed measures of expectations and criticism towards their children, ⁎ p b 0.05.
however, neither was a significant predictor of either form of child perfectionism, nor ⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
were they correlated to children's perceptions (see Supplementary material). ⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.
 B.C. Harvey et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141 139

Table 5
Hierarchical regressions predicting each type of perfectionism, controlling for the opposite type of perfectionism.

SOP-striving SOP-critical

Step Predictors B SE β 95% CI Δ r2 B SE β 95% CI Δ r2

1 0.04 0.04
Perfectionism 0.16 0.06 0.19⁎⁎ [0.043, 0.277] 0.23 0.09 0.19⁎⁎ [0.062, 0.404]
Age 0.03 0.04 0.05 [−0.050, 0.103] 0.02 0.05 0.04 [−0.068, 0.116]
2 0.08 0.11
Perfectionism 0.12 0.06 0.14a [−0.002, 0.241] 0.17 0.09 0.14a [−0.003, 0.336]
Age 0.05 0.04 0.08 [−0.029, 0.119] 0.04 0.04 0.06 [−0.051, 0.124]
Expectations 0.09 0.02 0.29⁎⁎⁎ [0.047, 0.140] 0.03 0.03 0.09 [−0.023, 0.091]
Criticism −0.02 0.05 −0.03 [−0.119, 0.083] 0.26 0.06 0.31⁎⁎⁎ [0.141, 0.369]

Note. B represents the unstandardized regression coefficients; β represents the standardized regression coefficients.
a
p b 0.10.
⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.

pattern might be due to cohort effects rather than the general trajectory
of SOP-critical.
Additionally, as expected, children's SOP-striving and SOP-critical
were significantly correlated, whereas child affect and academic
achievement were not (see Table 4). Parental expectations and criticism
were significantly correlated (r = 0.25, p b 0.01). The interaction
between parental expectations and criticism was not found to be a
significant predictor in any preliminary analyses. Moreover, partial cor-
relations controlling for the opposite type of perfectionism found in
Table 3 reveal the anticipated relations among the variables.
5.2. Replication in a younger sample
Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted in order
to examine the relation of children's perceived parental expectations
and criticism to children's SOP-striving and SOP-critical. In order to ac-
count for the overlap between the two types of perfectionism, the
other type of perfectionism was entered in the first step of the regres-
sion, along with children's age as it was a potential covariate. The results
from these hierarchical regressions can be found in Table 5.
Consistent with hypotheses and past research, the results revealed
perceived parental expectations significantly predicted SOP-striving, ac-
counting for 8% of the variance in scores. Similarly, perceived parental
criticism significantly predicted SOP-critical, accounting for 11% of the
variance in scores.
5.3. Predicting affect and academic achievement
Multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to examine
the relation of children's SOP-striving and SOP-critical to children's af-
fect and academic achievement. Child age was excluded from these
analyses given that it was unrelated above. These results can be found
in Table 6.
5.3.1. Child affect
Neither SOP-striving nor SOP-critical were significantly related to
children's positive affect, although there was a marginally significant
association for SOP-striving. In contrast, SOP-critical significantly pre-
dicted children's negative affect, explaining 8% of the variance in scores.
5.3.2. Academic achievement
As expected, SOP-striving significantly predicted children's academ-
ic achievement, accounting for 10% of the variance in scores. SOP-critical
appeared to be unrelated.
5.4. Mediation analyses
The regression analyses reported in the preceding section suggest
two possible mediational pathways from perceptions of parenting to
level of perfectionism to childhood outcomes. The first pathway is
from perceived parental criticism to SOP-critical and to negative affect,
is illustrated in Fig. 1. The second pathway is from perceived parental
expectations to SOP-striving and to school achievement, is illustrated
in Fig. 2. We tested these pathways with mediational analyses using
the PROCESS macro from Hayes (2013). The PROCESS method uses a
bootstrap re-sampling procedure (k = 1000) to estimate 95% confi-
dence intervals (CI) of the indirect effects. All analyses were done con-
trolling for the effect of the other form of perfectionism. In order to
obtain standardized coefficients, all variables were standardized prior
to being included in the analyses.
5.4.1. From parental criticism to child affect
The total model including both types of perfectionism and perceived
parental criticism accounted for 9.85% of the variance in negative affect.
Examining the 95% confidence intervals revealed that the direct effect of
parental criticism was not significant, whereas the indirect effect
through SOP-critical was. This supports full mediation of perceived pa-
rental criticism on child negative affect through SOP-critical.
5.4.2. From parental expectations to academic achievement
The total model including both types of perfectionism and perceived
parental expectations accounted for 12.99% of the variance in academic
achievement. Examining the 95% confidence intervals revealed that
both the direct and indirect effects of parental expectations was

Table 6
Regressions predicting child affect and academic achievement from child perfectionism.

SOP-striving SOP-critical

Outcome r2 B SE β 95% CI B SE β 95% CI

a
Positive affect 0.03 0.09 0.05 0.13 [−0.005, 0.191] −0.07 0.04 −0.11 [−0.146, 0.016]
Negative affect 0.08 −0.02 0.07 −0.02 [−0.166, 0.118] 0.24 0.06 0.28⁎⁎⁎ [0.123, 0.361]
Academic achievement 0.10 4.36 1.06 0.30⁎⁎⁎ [2.275, 6.443] 0.82 0.86 0.07 [−0.873, 2.503]

Note. B represents the unstandardized regression coefficients; β represents the standardized regression coefficients.
a
p b 0.10.
⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.
140 B.C. Harvey et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141

Fig. 1. Mediational role of SOP-critical in the relation between parental criticism and child negative affect. This figure illustrates full mediation by SOP-critical, controlling for SOP-striving.

significant. This supports partial mediation of perceived parental expec-
tations on child academic achievement through SOP-striving.
6. Discussion
The first goal of the present study was to replicate past research test-
ing the Social Expectations Model (Flett et al., 2002) but in an elementa-
ry school-aged sample. The results exactly replicated Rice et al. (2005)
and McArdle and Duda (2008), revealing that parental expectations
are associated with SOP-striving, while parental criticism is associated
with SOP-critical. This demonstrates that the influence of these parent-
ing behaviors begins a lot earlier than previously established. In addi-
tion, these results provide further evidence for Flett et al.'s (2002)
model by showing these associations exist even when exploring them
concurrently in a child sample, instead of retrospectively exploring
perceptions of parents during childhood. Importantly, these parenting
behaviors were children's perceptions and not parent reported
behaviors, and in fact the same findings do not hold up when exploring
parents' self-reported levels of expectations and criticism (see Supple-
mental materials for these results). While this is consistent with previ-
ous research on this topic, it is consequently not possible to eliminate
the possibility that perfectionistic children are just more inclined to
rate their parents in this manner. However, it should also be noted
that parents may not understand the extent to which their child takes
their comments as criticism or might not feel like the expectations
they hold for their child are unrealistic. Thus, it could be argued that
how the child experiences these behaviors is paramount.
Additionally, these results suggest that perfectionism has already
developed by age 8, earlier than previously reported. This means that
the present study was unable to establish that these parenting behav-
iors pre-date perfectionism, and thus, future research needs to explore
this possibility in a sample under the age of 8. Unfortunately, the current
methodology for measuring perfectionism in children (i.e. question-
naire measures) will not work with younger children and thus, a behav-
ioral measure of perfectionism would be required before such a study
would be possible.
The second goal of the present study was to extend past research re-
lating SOP-striving and SOP-critical to affect and academic achievement
in a child sample. Consistent with past research (Stoeber & Otto, 2006),
results revealed that SOP-critical had a significant positive relation to
negative affect, whereas SOP-striving was only marginally related to
positive affect. In contrast, SOP-striving was positively related to
academic achievement while SOP-critical was unrelated, once again
replicating past research (Stoeber, 2012). These contrasting findings

Fig. 2. Mediational role of SOP-striving in the relation between parental expectations and academic achievement. This figure illustrates partial mediation by SOP-striving, controlling for
SOP-critical.
 B.C. Harvey et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 136–141
highlight the clear distinction between the two forms of perfectionism.
While SOP-striving may not always have affective benefits, they do
consistently better in the academic sphere from elementary school to
university. In contrast, the negative implications of SOP-critical on
well-being are visible even during childhood, suggesting the detrimen-
tal effects are possibly more pervasive than previously thought, whereas
the relation to academic achievement is more tumultuous.
Finally, we explored the direct and indirect relations of parental ex-
pectations and criticism to child affect and academic achievement. In-
terestingly, we found that only parental expectations had a direct
negative effect on academic achievement, while parental criticism was
only indirectly related to negative affect. This means that, even when
considering SOP-striving, children perceiving their parents as having
very high expectations for them results in worse academic achieve-
ments. We were unable to support two of our hypotheses. First we
had expected there to be costs to parental criticism in general, which
we did not find, and second, we expected benefits from parental expec-
tations where academic achievement was concerned. Despite being in-
correct in the direction of this latter hypothesis, the results also revealed
that parental expectations were positively associated with academic
achievement, but only through its relation to SOP-striving. This suggests
that while perceiving high expectations from parents in general hurts
performance, when children are also high on SOP-striving, they are
not only protected from this negative association, but they strive in
this environment. This is likely due to individuals with SOP-striving in-
ternalizing parental expectations within themselves (Flett et al., 2002),
resulting is an equivalent desire to strive for excellence, and protecting
them from the negative consequences of perceiving considerable pres-
sure from parents. In contrast, children who fail to internalize these
standards may experience these expectations as very controlling,
resulting in worse academic outcomes. A similar mechanism may also
illuminate why SOP-critical fully explains the association between pa-
rental criticism and negative affect; as these children may partially in-
ternalize this criticism (Flett et al., 2002), resulting in worse affect
because they feel like their parents are constantly disappointed in
them, leading them to become similarly disappointed in themselves.
Importantly, given the cross-sectional and correlational nature of the
present study, discretion is advised when inferring definitive conclu-
sions based on this research. Moreover, due to a lack of a better alterna-
tive, the measures of parental expectations and criticism consisted of
only two items each; which is potentially problematic despite being
based on a CFA. However, given these results replicated previous stud-
ies, it suggests the results are reliable. It is also important to note that
the findings in the present study are based on self-report measures
that were collected in a single context, posing the risk of introducing
common method bias (Doty & Glick, 1998). In addition, participants
were drawn from four Canadian elementary schools, which combined
with the American and United Kingdom samples of Rice et al. (2005)
and McArdle and Duda (2008) respectively, limits the generalizability
of these findings to Western samples.
Collectively, the present study built on previous research by extending
it to a child-aged sample, revealing that research differentiating the two
forms of perfectionism is pervasive in that similar findings exist even in
children as young as 8 years old. The implications of these findings are
that perfectionism develops prior to the age of 8, and therefore re-
searchers need to develop the methodologies necessary to explore perfec-
tionism in younger children in order to determine when it develops and
thus when interventions might be most effective. Moreover, the present
investigation represents the first time parental expectations and criticism
were examined in relation to outcomes traditionally associated with per-
fectionism, revealing indirect effects through SOP-striving and SOP-criti-
cal respectively, and a direct negative effect of parental expectations on
children's academic achievement. Finally, the present analysis contributes
to the literature on perfectionism by highlighting the divergent patterns
141
of SOP-striving and SOP-critical with regards to perceived parenting, per-
sonal affect and school performance.
Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible if not for the cooperation
and support of the dedicated administrators and teachers in the New
Frontiers School Board. Moreover, the authors would like to acknowl-
edge the families who participated in the study, as none of this would
be possible without them. We also would like to thank Jessica Cohen
and Katrina Kairys for their assistance during the data collection phase
of the project.
This work was supported by a grant and a Ph.D. scholarship from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
[grant number 435-2014-0671; scholarship number 767-2015-2376].
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.069.
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