ABSTRACT
Perfectionism is considered a personality trait and is characterized by striving for flawlessness, setting unreasonably high standards for performance, and making overly critical evaluations of one's behavior. There are a number of ways to conceptualize and measure perfectionism in the research literature, but most distinguish between some sort of positive and negative forms of perfectionism. The Big Three Perfectionism Scale was developed to examine multidimensional perfectionism in greater detail by drawing on the existing literature on perfectionism and measures three higher-order factors of perfectionism via ten lower order facets. Researchers have examined the relationship between the perceived parenting style an individual experienced as a child and perfectionism in order to better understand how this maladaptive form of perfectionism develops. Because perfectionism is associated with numerous negative outcomes, and because the longstanding belief in the field of gifted education is that the gifted are prone to perfectionism, interventions to address perfectionism and its resulting psychopathology among the gifted have been developed.
