small samples of university students ( n525) and psychiatric patients ( n521). Evidence of concordance was also
obtained in a study by Vieth and Trull (1999) using a larger sample of university students and their parents.
Flett, Besser, and Hewitt (2005) examined the correspondence between self-reports on the HFMPS and informant
reports in 220 pairs of participants (i.e., young adults and their friends). As was the case in the Hewitt and Flett
(1991) study, concordance was greatest for socially prescribed perfectionism and lowest for self-oriented perfec-
tionism (correlations ranging from .27 to .40). Mushquash, Sherry, Sherry, and Allen (2013) investigated abbrevi-
ated five-item measures of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism that became part of separate latent
constructs involving other perfectionism measures. For instance, the self-oriented composite factor also included
a five-item measure from the FMPS personal standards subscale and four items from the EDI perfectionism
subscale. Their sample consisted of 242 undergraduate women, 218 mothers, and 160 fathers. The student self-
reports of self-oriented perfectionism were positively associated with maternal ratings of self-oriented perfection-
ism (.53) and paternal ratings of self-oriented perfectionism (.38). Similarly, the student self-reports of socially
prescribed perfectionism were associated with maternal ratings of socially prescribed perfectionism (.35) and
paternal ratings of socially prescribed perfectionism (.23). Cockell et al. (2002) conducted a comparative study of
21 women with anorexia nervosa, 17 women in the psychiatric control group, and 21 women without a psychiat-
ric history. Cockell et al. (2002) found that self-oriented perfectionism was associated with interview-rated self-
oriented perfectionism ( r5.77) and socially prescribed perfectionism ( r5.61). Socially prescribed perfectionism
was also associated with interview-rated self-oriented perfectionism ( r5.83) and socially prescribed perfection-
ism ( r5.83).
Divergent/Discriminant
The Cockell et al. (2002) study of patients with anorexia nervosa provided evidence of discriminant validity.
As expected, other-oriented perfectionism was unrelated to the interview ratings of self-oriented and socially pre-
scribed perfectionism (respective r’s of2.12 and .05). This study also established that the women with anorexia
nervosa had substantially higher levels of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism relative to the psy-
chiatric and normal groups. The mean score for self-oriented perfectionism ( M593.4) for women with anorexia
is among the highest group mean ever recorded for self-oriented perfectionism. The study by Wheeler et al.
(2011) also yielded significant group differences in levels of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism.
Three groups (depression, socially anxious, and OCD groups) had significantly higher self-oriented perfectionism
scores than the control participants. The panic disorder with agoraphobia groups and two groups (depression,
socially anxious) had higher mean levels of socially prescribed perfectionism.
Construct/Factor Analytic
Originally, Hewitt and Flett (1991) reported principal component analyses of data from 1106 university stu-
dents and 263 psychiatric patients. In both instances, a Cattell scree test ( Cattell, 1978; Cattell & Vogelmann,
1977) indicated the presence of three components. All 15 self-oriented perfectionism items comprised the first
component with loadings ranging from .45 to .66. The second component consisted of all 15 socially prescribed
perfectionism items with loadings ranging from .39 to .63. The third component consisted of 13 items tapping
other-oriented perfectionism with loadings ranging from .38 to .63. Similar analysis with the data from psychiat-
ric patients yielded high coefficients of congruence when considered along with the results for students but the
overall results were not as clearcut. The first component consisted of 14 self-oriented perfectionism items and
the second component consisted of 14 socially prescribed perfectionism items. The other two items loaded on the
third component along with 10 other-oriented perfectionism items. The other five other-oriented perfectionism
subscales were loaded complexly on this component and on the self-oriented perfectionism first component.
Cox et al. (2002) evaluated the HFMPS by conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) on the data from
412 adult clinical outpatients and 288 first year students. A three-factor model was evaluated and none of the
evaluative criteria provided a good fit. Instead, Cox et al. (2002) proposed and tested a revised model consisting
of five items from each of the subscales and reported an adequate fit across the two samples. One concern about
theCox et al. (2002) CFA results is they did not take into account a possible wording factor due to several test
items being worded in the negative direction. This aspect distinguishes the HFMPS from most other perfection-
ism measures. Method factors involving item wording should be taken into account when evaluating factor struc-
tures using CFAs (see Woods, 2006 ). Consider, for instance, how item wording plays a role in analyses of the
Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, which is a construct that is related to socially prescribed perfectionism (see
Rodebaugh et al., 2004 ). One illustration of this concern is that Cox et al. (2002) constructed brief five-item
HFMPS subscales and all five items comprising the abbreviated measure of other-oriented perfectionism were603 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
V. VICES AND VIRTUES