The effects of perfectionism on decisional delay under conditions of perceived risk

Abstract

The present study sought to explore and expand the knowledge regarding the fairly novel body of literature looking at perfectionism and the decision-making process called decisional delay. More specifically, this study begins to examine the potential influence of perfectionism on indicators of decisional delay, selection difficulty, and stress reactivity involved in decision-making processes. This study examined the predictive relationships between perfectionism, decisional delay, selection difficulty and stress reactivity in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 90) following random assignment to one of two (low, high) risk conditions on a reward selection decision-making task. Overall, analyses showed that dimensions of perfectionism carried mixed predictive abilities for selection difficulty and stress reactivity on a decision-making task. Patterns of results indicated that those higher in dimensions that encompass critical self-evaluations, concerns with error, and threat of failure, were predictive of increases in difficulties deciding and heightened stress. Moreover, results showed that the perfectionism dimension characterized by personal standards, which arguably contains adaptive capacities, was not predictive of selection difficulty and stress reactivity. Finally, findings demonstrated that perfectionism was not predictive of the reaction time decisional delay indicator. The results are discussed in terms of practical implications, as well as future directions.