Intercollegiate perfectionistic athletes' perspectives on achievement: Contributions to the understanding and assessment of perfectionism in sport

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore perfectionistic athletes’ perspectives on achievement in sport. Male and female intercollegiate athletes whose Sport Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale 2 (Sport-MPS-2; Gotwals & Dunn, 2009) subscale profile reflected healthy perfectionism (n = 7) or unhealthy perfectionism (n = 11) were purposefully sampled and interviewed. Content analysis of the interview data revealed three themes: personal expectations, coping with challenge, and role of others. Although these themes were common to both healthy and unhealthy perfectionists, the content generally represented a dichotomy of positive and negative interpretations, respectively. Discussion explores the degree to which these findings provide insight into perfectionism among athletes, support use of the tripartite model (Stoeber & Otto, 2006) and anecdotal accounts of perfectionism (e.g., Burns, 1980; Hamachek, 1978) within sport, foster resolution of the healthy–unhealthy perfectionism debate, contribute to the development of the Sport-MPS-2, and advance understanding of the domain-specificity of perfectionism.