Perfectionistic Cognitions as Related to Optimism and Pessimism in College Students

This study investigates the relationship between perfectionistic cognitions and optimism-pessimism, including the results of a study involving 88 college students. The Slovak version of the optimism-pessimism questionnaire ISS (SarmánySchuller, 1992) and the Perfectionistic Cognitions Inventory (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, Gray, 1998) were used in our research, which showed a statistically significant negative correlation of r = –0.27 between optimism and the measure of perfectionistic cognitions and a statistically significant positive correlation of r = 0.41 between pessimism and perfectionistic cognitions. These results confirm negative expectations associated with perfectionistic cognitions.

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