How Instagram Turbo-Charged the Worst Kind of Perfectionism Not all perfectionism hurts the same. The research is clear about this. Self-oriented perfectionism (your own high standards) is painful but can sometimes drive useful work. Socially prescribed perfectionism, the belief that other people require you to be perfect, is the one consistently linked to depression, eating...
The Perfectionist’s Secret: They Don’t Start Perfectionists are supposed to be the over-workers. The ones who grind. The ones who cannot stop polishing a thing. They are often also the ones who have not started. This is the quiet paradox that shows up in the research on perfectionism and procrastination. The same person who pulls...
Perfectionism Is Not Making You Better at Your Work The cultural script is that perfectionists are your best employees. The high achievers. The ones who care so much they stay late. The research does not agree. A 2025 meta-analysis by Thomas Curran and Aishwarya Bellam looked at data from 9,560 participants across 35 years of...
Perfectionism Is Rising: What 30 Years of Data Say About Why We Feel So Awful Perfectionism is the trait people still brag about in job interviews. It sounds like a weakness that is secretly a strength. The data say something different. Between 1989 and 2016, psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill pulled together 164 samples...