title: Perfectionism in anorexia nervosa: novel performance based evidence.
abstract: Existing research into perfectionism in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is limited by a reliance upon self-report measures. This study used novel performance based measures to investigate whether there is behavioural evidence for elevated perfectionism in AN. 153 participants took part in the study--81 with a diagnosis of AN and 72 healthy controls (HCs). Participants completed two performance based tasks assessing perfectionism--a text replication task and a bead sorting task--along with self-report measures of perfectionism. Significant group differences were observed on both tasks. In the text replication task the AN group took significantly longer compared with healthy controls (p = 0.03, d = 0.36) and produced significantly higher quality copies (p = <0.01, d = 0.45). In the bead sorting task, there was a trend towards more participants in the AN group choosing to check their work compared with the HC group (p = 0.07, d = 0.30) and the AN group took significantly longer checking than those in the HC group (p = <0.01, d = 0.45). Only copy quality uniquely predicted scores on self report measures of perfectionism. This study provides empirically tested evidence of elevated performance based perfectionism in AN compared with a healthy control group.
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lloyd
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yiend
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom; South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom; South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom; Illia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kate
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tchanturia
mesh_terms: D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001519:Behavior; D003710:Demography; D006801:Humans; D010551:Personality; D012044:Regression Analysis; D057566:Self Report; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult