Sponsored by
COLLEGE PERFECTIONISM SCORES ROSE ACROSS 27 YEARS
Perfectionism Scores Can Be Compared Across Generations
A Trait Like That Is Assumed To Stay Roughly The Same
One Meta Analysis Tested That Assumption Directly
It Pooled College Student Samples Gathered Since 1989
All Three Perfectionism Scores Rose In A Straight Line
The Steepest Rise Was In What Students Believed Others Wanted
Its Authors Offered A Cultural Reading They Could Not Measure
This Part Covers The Numbers The Reading And What Parents Scored
THIS NEWSLETTER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. NOTHING IN THIS CONTENT CONSTITUTES MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. ALWAYS CONSULT A QUALIFIED HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY HEALTH RELATED DECISIONS.
A Quick Shoutout To Our Sponsor: PIQUE
Here's What They Have For You 🍃
👇🏻
Afternoon energy. Minus the afternoon coffee.
Pique’s new X·E Fountain energy drink delivers clean, caffeine-free energy without the jitters, crash, or dehydration. Vitamin B Complex, magnesium, and electrolytes help support steady focus, while crisp cucumber-celery-lime makes every sip ridiculously refreshing.
OKAY BACK TO THE LECTURE HALL 🏫
👇🏻
WHAT THE ANALYSIS POOLED 🧮
Thomas Curran And Andrew Hill Published That Analysis In 2019
Their Work Rests On 164 Samples And 41,641 College Students
Those Students Attended College In America Canada Or Britain
Psychological Bulletin Ran The Paper
Every Sample Used The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale
Hewitt And Flett Built That Instrument In 1991
The Scale Has 45 Items Split Into Three Subscales
Each Subscale Contains 15 Items
Self Oriented Perfectionism Means Punitive Self Evaluation
Socially Prescribed Perfectionism Locates The Pressure In Others
Other Oriented Perfectionism Judges Other People Critically
Data Collection Ran Between 1989 And 2016
Women Were 70.92 Percent Of The Pooled Students
Mean Age Across The Samples Was 20.66 Years
College Students Are Approximately The Same Age
That Fact Is What Makes The Design Work
Scores Gathered At Different Times Test Birth Cohort Differences
The Literature Search Returned 1,768 Studies At The Start
Screening Left 240 Studies And Data Sets
Inclusion Required A Mean Age Between 18 And 25 Years
One Coder Ran Every Search And Every Screening
A Quick Shoutout To Our Sponsor: FACTOR
Here's What They Have For You 🍳
👇🏻
Want chef-crafted, dietitian-designed meals ready in 2 minutes?
Try Factor, America's #1 ready-to-eat meal delivery service.
Made from ingredients you recognize. Whole food. Nothing unnecessary. Let’s eat real.
Get 50% off your first Factor box + Free Breakfast for a year *1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year while subscription active.
HOW FAR THE SCORES MOVED 📈
Each Sample Mean Was Weighted Before Anything Was Compared
Perfectionism Scores Were Then Regressed On Year Of Collection
All Three Dimensions Increased Linearly
The Effect Sizes Compare 1989 With 2017
Percentiles Make Those Gains Easier To Read
Place The 1989 Cohort At The 50th Percentile
Self Oriented Perfectionism Gained 0.12 Standard Deviations
The 2017 Average Student Scored At The 55th
That Amounts To A 10 Percent Increase
Other Oriented Perfectionism Gained 0.19
Its 2017 Average Reached The 58th
The Same Calculation Gives A 16 Percent Rise
Socially Prescribed Perfectionism Gained 0.40
By 2017 It Had Moved To The 66th
Nearly Two Thirds Of 2017 Students Cleared The 1989 Mean
The Increase There Is 32 Percent
Socially Prescribed Perfectionism Moved Furthest Of The Three
It Is The Belief That Others Require Perfection For Approval
Curran And Hill Call It The Most Debilitating Dimension
The Trends Remained When Gender And Country Were Controlled
Every Figure Here Describes College Students Only
That Group Skews White And Higher In Socioeconomic Background
A Quick Shoutout To Our Sponsor: THE CODE
Here's What They Have For You
👇🏻
Learn how to code faster with AI in 5 mins a day
You're spending 40 hours a week writing code that AI could do in 10.
While you're grinding through pull requests, 200k+ engineers at OpenAI, Google & Meta are using AI to ship faster.
How?
The Code newsletter teaches them exactly which AI tools to use and how to use them.
Here's what you get:
AI coding techniques used by top engineers at top companies in just 5 mins a day
Tools and workflows that cut your coding time in half
Tech insights that keep you 6 months ahead
Sign up and get access to the Ultimate Claude code guide to ship 5X faster.
WHERE PARENTS COME INTO IT 👪
Curran And Hill Offered A Cultural Reading Of The Rise
They Named Neoliberal Governance In America Canada And Britain
Their Abstract Dates That Emphasis From The 1980s
Competitive Individualism Is The Phrase They Used
That Reading Is Interpretation Rather Than Measurement
The Analysis Contains No Measure Of Any Cultural Variable
Anxious And Controlling Parenting Was Another Named Change
Bart Soenens And Maarten Vansteenkiste Wrote A Comment On It
Their Comment Ran In The Same 2019 Issue
It Argued That Blaming Parents Is Premature
They Split Parental Control Into Structure And Pressure
Only Control As Pressure Is Implied In Perfectionism
Available Studies Do Not Show Controlling Parenting Rising
Curran And Hill Replied With Two More Analyses In 2022
The Second Covered 84 Studies And 23,975 College Students
It Scored Parental Expectations And Parental Criticism
Both Come From The Frost Questionnaire
Parental Expectations Gained 0.51 Standard Deviations
Harsh Parental Criticism Gained 0.45
The 2022 Effect Sizes Span 1988 To 2021
About Two Thirds Of 2021 Students Cleared The 1988 Means
Every One Of Those Scores Is A Student Describing A Parent
No Parent Was Measured Directly
