Raising the bar in clinical perfectionism: an evaluation in the domain of weight loss

Clinical perfectionists who successfully meet a salient, personally demanding, and selfimposed standard are thought to feel dissatisfied with success, reappraise the standard as insufficient, and raise the bar by setting more challenging goals (Shafran et al., 2002). Past studies evaluate raising the bar using tasks that are not salient, personally demanding, or selfimposed. The present study examined raising the bar in the salient domain of weight loss. Overweight participants completed a 2-week food and exercise diary during which they set personal weight goals. Raising the bar was measured by calculating the difference between weight goals at separate time points. The General Goal-setting Questionnaire (Krause et al., 2016) measured (1) standard dissatisfaction and reappraisal, and (2) the tendency to raise the bar. Results revealed that clinical perfectionism significantly predicted standard dissatisfaction and reappraisal, but not the tendency to raise the bar or an increase in weight goals. Implications are discussed.