Instant Genius - Why perfectionism is on the rise and how we can combat it, with Thomas Curran

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

In this episode we speak to Thomas Curran, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at the London School of Economics and author of The Perfection Trap – The Power of Good Enough in a World that Always wants more. He tells us why perfectionism is on the rise, why that’s a bad thing and what we can do about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. It's a phrase a lot of us will have uttered at one point or another, often as a badge of honour,

intended to describe our diligent, meticulous nature. But perfectionism can have a significant impact on our mental health and our ability to function. In this episode, we speak to Thomas Curran, assistant professor of psychological and behavioural sciences at the London School of Economics, and author of The Perfection Trap, The Power of Good Enough, in a world that always wants more. He tells us why perfectionism is on the rise, why that's a bad thing and what we can do about it. So you're a psychologist that studies perfectionism,

and that's quite an unusual but very interesting topic to study. So how did you get into that? I got into it, I guess, through my own personal experiences of perfectionism. The academic world is quite competitive, like a lot of jobs these days. And whilst I was climbing the career ladder and working really hard and putting a lot of pressure on myself to sort of outperform others of things like grants and publications and all the rest of it. I definitely experienced a lot of self-imposed pressure, a lot of worry about how I was doing relative to other people, a lot of

rumination and brooding about not quite being good enough. And that culminated in a quite significant mental health problems, which seem to stem from this kind of need to be perfect. So that kind of turned me in the direction of this personality characteristic of perfectionism. I looked into literature. I couldn't see much out there. And so I decided that I'd try to find out more. So let's start the very basics then. So people will have heard of the term perfectionism. They might even relate to it themselves. But there's actually scientific definitions for what perfectionism actually is. And there are several different types. That's right. So perfectionism at root is a kind of deficit thing. And this is an idea that I'm not perfect enough and I need to conceal my imperfections from

everyone and all around me. But inside that kind of core deficit belief, there's three main ways that perfectionism can manifest. The first is called self-oriented perfectionism. So this is a perfectionism comes from within. So I need to be perfect and nothing but perfect. And when I haven't been perfect, I'm very critical about myself. The second is socially described perfectionism. So this is the perfectionism comes from outside of us. It's affections we perceive that comes from the outside environment. So everyone expects. me to be perfect. And when I'm not perfect, they're critical or judgmental. And the third type of perfectionism is other oriented perfectionism. So this is perfectionism as turned outwards onto other

people. I expect you to be perfect. And when you're not perfect, I'm quite critical. I can be quite punitive. And these three kind of the core dimensions of perfectionism. And people can have high levels of one, two, or even all three. And what we tend to see as a highly perfectionistic people tend to score high on all of them. So sort of where does this set of definitions come from? You know, how do we study this sort of thing or measure it? It comes from many, many years of clinical case notes from clinicians, empirical research, talking to people developing questionnaires to measure these dimensions and looking where people sit on the perfectionism spectrum and then using those measures to sort of identify correlations with important things like mental health issues like depression,

anxiety, relational outcomes or maybe performance outcomes. So that's kind of where it's come from. It's a lot of work over many, many years, just talking to perfectionist to people really and them telling us what it is and then us measuring it and looking at what it contributes to. So how common is perfectionism amongst the, you know, the population at large? This was a question that really I wanted to address. We didn't know that until some recent research that I published looking at the prevalence of perfectionism over time. So a lot of people will talk about perfectionism. They would say perfectionism is all around us.

We feel like there's a lot of pressure to be perfect in modern society. But there wasn't really any way of knowing, you know, what is the prevalence and is it growing? So I did a piece of research a few years ago, which I've updated for my book, The Perfection Trap. And what we're seeing is something quite remarkable. Perfectionism is on the rise. and it's rising really quickly for that social element of perfectionism, that socially prescribed perfectionism.

We're seeing about a 40% increase since the late 1980s. And so it seems that young people in particular are telling us that those social expectations of perfection are rising really sharply, and that's weighing on their mental health. So that's something that I'd like to get into a little bit later. But what do we know about where perfectionism comes from? How does it develop, as some people, more prone to it than others? Yeah, I've been thinking about this question a lot because the data we

have is correlational, it's not causal. So, you know, we just have data points that we've mapped over time. So we can't definitively know exactly what's causing this rise. But we can look out into the world and make some speculative, but nevertheless evidence-based claims. The first that I've identified in my book is excessive pressures to excel that are being placed on young people. And that comes from two places mainly. The first is schools and colleges, which have become really competitive and the need to outperform other students and get into the top sets, which then allows us to get into the higher exam boundaries, which allows us to get into the best universities, which allows us to get the best jobs. These are really real and life pressures that young people feel,

and school has become really pressurized. So I think that's one area. But those pressures are also transmitted from parents too. So parents see those pressures. They know how important it is for young people to excel, particularly in academics. And so there is also expectations placed on young people from their parents. We've done some research showing that young people's expectations of perfection have risen over time in lockstep with perfectionism. So we think those pressures to excel are really important factors. I also think social media having come up in the last couple of decades is on the scene in the last couple of decades is really also an important factor. Young people have bombarded with these kind of limitless images of perfection, perfect lives and lifestyles. So social media, I think,

has a role to play here too, but also the workplace, you know, very pressurized workplace. The imperative is to really hustle and grind your way up to the top. And again, that place is a lot of expectation on people to perform, outperform others and in place excessively high standards on themselves. So we think those are the main factors. So you mentioned their social media and I think this is one of the first things that people might want to investigate when talking about perfectionism because you see influencers posting their perfect lives. You know, they're in, I don't know, on the beach in Bali or something or they're an amazing party or have we ever studied anything about why people do that and the effect that it has on the people that consume it? The important thing to

say about social media first and foremost is it's kind of well it is an advertising device instagram facebook tithok the executives of these companies are very clear that their main revenue stream is for advertising and so the whole point of these apps and platforms is to generate a sense of discontent so that people are more likely to click on targeted ads which provide them with a material solution to that discontent. So the whole point of these platforms is to really drive that sense of discontent because it's much more profitable. Now within that, you tend to see the algorithms then really start to hone in and I guess reward, celebrate perfect lives, perfect lifestyles, which means that when you go into the platform, you kind of bombarded with all of these

perfect lives and lifestyles and anyone who's able to get generated, like shares, mentions tends to be elevated to the top. So it becomes a bit of a status game too. And so influences get pulled into this world. It's very profitable for those at the top. The winners win big. Anyone else doesn't really get too much attention to this. This is how social media begins to generate and kind of become a self-perpetuating hall of mirrors of perfection. And I think for young people in particular, it's really, really difficult to kind of view those images all the time and not in some way think about why aren't they like that? Why don't they like that?

Why don't they have those lives and kind of blame themselves, go in on themselves, and that pectuates the kind of deficit thinking that I'm not enough, I'm not perfect enough, I need to be more, which feeds into their perfectionism. So I think social media is definitely a big piece of this puzzle, but the reason is because the apps and platforms are really designed to generate those kinds of feelings. So we've mentioned there social media, obviously, which is a recent, relatively recent, anyway, phenomena. What do we know about the history of perfectionism, you know? Like, how long have we been aware of it as a concept?

We've been aware of it for a long, long time. The turn of the century clinicians, very famous clinicians were talking about perfectionistic tendencies. I think the most high profile master clinician would be Karen Horny, who in the 30s, 40s and 50s, is wrote extensively on what she called cultural neuroses. So that's neuroses that come from societal pressures. And she was very big on a concert called the tyranny of should. So I should be attractive. I should be fit.

I should be healthy. I should be strong. And she believed that culture and society generated these tyrannies as should, which created a lot of internal conflict within people. That's to say, the conflict between who I really am, the imperfect person I am, and who I should be, the idealized perfect version of myself, which creates neurosis, which creates mental health, problems, which ultimately is what she was presented with when she was treating her patients.

And so I would say, you know, that was probably the seminar work on perfectionism, this idea that people were created in their minds of an idealized version of myself and needed to be perfect to kind of soothe those internal conflicts. And then over the years, we've kind of taken those ideas. and we started to think about what those idealised versions of herself look like, where they come from and how they manifest within individuals. And over time, we've arrived at these kind of three core dimensions, which we've then used to do some more systematic research on perfectionism.

But I would say that's where the real kind of serious inquiry around perfectionism started. So as you lay out quite clearly in the book, there's a whole variety of effects that perfectionism can have on our, mental health. So let's explore that because a lot of people might think, you know, oh, it's not so bad. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Maybe it's even a good quality. But why is it so harmful? Absolutely. We see that a lot. I think there's the kind of begrudging admiration for perfection. I call it our favorite floor because I think when we, let's say, go to interviews and we get that dreaded question, what's your biggest weakness? A lot of people will all say, I'm a total perfectionist.

there's a kind of sense that, you know, I know this kind of self-sacrificial drive at some level is a bit problematic, but at the same time, nobody thinks that anyone looks for less than perfection, and they certainly don't think society looks for anything less than perfection. So there's this kind of idea that perfectionism is a lionized quality. Now, what I want to try and do in the book is really demystify that myth and kind of drive home the point that perfectionism has quite profound impacts on our mental health, particularly when things don't go quite to plan. So perfectionist strive to meet excessive expectations.

That's kind of the core of who they are. But they do so for the approval and validation of other people. And so they find themselves in this kind of cycle where they need other people's approvals. So they strive for perfection. Unfortunately, though, they often fail to meet that high standard because it was too high. So they feel anxious about themselves. The self-esteem plummets. They worry, they ruminate.

And so they overcompensate by setting even higher goals, which they ultimately don't meet, and you can begin to see a cycle of self-defeat starts to kick in. Now, when you throw into that mix, a significant life stress, things that come out in the blue and not within our control, you know, moments like heartbreak being laid off, perhaps you get ill or simply go through like a really rough period in life where nothing seems to go your way. Perfections can really amplify and elongate those stresses. it can push them into every sphere of life.

It can impact work, relationships. It creates more conflict, more stress, more failure, more worry, more diminished self-esteem. And in these moments, we can think to ourselves, as everything seems to be falling around, that perfectionism is the one thing holding us up. Like, it's the one thing right now that's keeping me going. When if we take a look back, we'd see that it's the perfectionism that that's creating those problems in the first place and making it much more difficult for us to cope with those moments of stress. And that's why we see quite significant relationships in the

academic literature between perfectionism and mental health complaints such as anxiety or depression. And over time, left untreated, we sometimes see more serious correlations with perhaps more serious mental health complaints. So that's why perfectionism is so damaging. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast.

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information. Okay, so we've laid out there how prevalent this is and why it's a problem. So let's have a look at what we can do about this problem, you know. Maybe it's better to look at the, the three different areas, the self-oriented, the socially prescribed, and the other-oriented, in turn, to see, you know, what can we do to, would you say, treat this sort of thing? So let's have a look at self-oriented perfectionism. Say somebody listening thinks that they're struggling with this. What advice or tips could you give them to help to cope? So the big thing about self-oriented perfectionism is we set high standards for ourselves, but we're very self-critical when things don't go well because it speaks to something that's

flawed about us, right? So we've done something wrong. We might have got bad feedback or someone might not have given us praise in a particular moment. I said we've done a presentation. And we can be very critical of ourselves in those moments. It's really, really important to remain compassionate, compassionate for ourselves and compassionate for other people. So every time you hit a set back and you feel like you're putting pressure on yourself, how could you be so stupid, what were you thinking, make a pledge to reframe that self-recrimination and choose kindness instead. So if you screw up a presentation, kindness. If you don't get the grade you hope for in school, kindness.

If you get some critical feedback, kindness, that's not going to be easy for the self-oriented perfectionist and you're going to succumb a lot. I can speak for my own experience here. But keep at that because self-kindness, self-compassion is. like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism. I mean, is there any work done on therapies? I'm thinking of things like perhaps CBT that could help with this sort of thing?

Yeah, CBT has got some evidence, some good evidence of a therapeutic effect on some of the symptoms of perfectionism. There are some clinicians who believe you're not going to get at the root perfectionism through CBT, so you might be able to reframe some of the thoughts and irrational beliefs that come with perfectionism, but in terms of getting at the root of that deficit mindset thinking,

CBT might be limited in that respect. But certainly there's some evidence that we can reframe and turn some of those facially thoughts around. So let's have a look at the social one, which I think is perhaps going to be the one that people are most, perhaps most aware of now because of them, as we've mentioned, social media. So what do we know about, you know, how has this grown?

How has social media affected this? How has it amplified this problem? The social pressures are really alarming, as I mentioned earlier. And we were expecting to see an increase because we know these things in modern society have increased. Pressures to be perfect have increased. We weren't quite expecting the speed. And as you mentioned, social media is certainly a major factor here, particularly for young people who have no real escape from pressures to be perfect. It doesn't matter if they're at school or in the home, if they're on social media.

or even if they're in the workplace, there's so much pressure out there to excel, to keep doing better, to keep doing more, that of course they're going to feel those social pressures because they're just all around them. And I think the biggest way to push through this is to use social media in the way that it was originally supposed to be used. That's to say, bringing people together, enjoying shared interests and enhancing offline relationships, right?

So, you know, using it to meet people in the real world, world and spend time in the real world because that's what social media was originally intended to do and that's where social media can be really, really powerful for people's health and relationships. But I would also say it's really important to try to challenge in your own mind what that kind of perfect version of yourself is and what it means to you. So think about that, what you're trying to curate, what image of yourself are you trying to move through the world with and challenge it. So, you know, put yourself in situations where perhaps you don't feel overly comfortable, get out of your comfort zone and see how it works out. You know, you might want to post an unfilled self. You might want to put yourself up for an important talk at work if public speaking is your anxiety. And just go through the feelings and anxiety of what, you know, what it means to essentially challenge that perfectionism. And often you'll find that it's not as catastrophic as you think it is. So often people are very accommodating. They're very kind of. and compassionate. And you find also that it wasn't as stressful or anxiety provoking as perhaps

you thought. And again, just putting little steps forward in the right direction, challenging what perfect means to you, both in social media or in work or in school, is really crucial to trying to move past those socially prescribed pressures. So you mentioned earlier, we talked about the education system and the pressure that's put on young people. What do we know about that? So you mentioned the set system, grades and things in the grade, What do we know about the pressure that that puts on young people? And, you know, is there anything we can do to mitigate those effects? Yeah, that's a really good question and something I've thought about a lot,

having worked in the academic area. I see perfectionism so often in my office. And I think really it's because in schools and colleges, standardized testing, grading, putting young people from an early age into sets and grade boundaries and ranking them and sifting them and sorting them. All of this teaches young people, really, that life is a, well, academics is a big, one big competition, standardised testing is all important, not just for their academic success, but also for their own self-esteem. You know, you are your grade. And it always pushes them to do more. So even perfect A's aren't enough,

because next time you have to continue that high standard and you have to keep improving, you have to keep doing better, you have to keep growing all the time. There's no let up. And these pressures, by the way, are much more amplified in the US. So a lot of my book is sort of focused towards the US education system because we see these pressures a lot more. But that's not to say that the trajectory in the direction of travelling the UK isn't in that direction too. So I write in the book, there are various ways we can try to change this. But I think the biggest one, we can look to places like Finland whose education systems are a lot less all-consuming. Students start school at a much older age. They don't test until later. And when they do

tests. The tests are very infrequent and not everything is on the line for those tests. And you tend to find that in that more safe, accommodating, supportive type of system, students are free to pursue their own interests, they can be very creative. And even on those STEM academic subjects where you think that the less intense type of schooling would harm students in terms of their academic abilities, we don't tend to find that Finnish students perform any better or any worse than those who have much more intensive education systems. I think that speaks to the importance of just turning down the dial a bit on the pressure in schools and colleges. And you won't get any less out from students, but what you will have is a much better adjusted student body who are

able to adapt and cope in the face of challenge. So for me, that's the biggest thing. Are perfectionists successful people? So that's one of the things that you hear a lot. Perfectionism is our favorite flaw because we know it kind of has. has negative connotations and it can impact negative young mental health, but our perfectionist successful. You know, we can point to highly successful people and say that it must be their perfectionism that got them there. What's really interesting when we look at the relationship between perfectionism and success in places like school or work is that the relationships between these two things are really, really small and in some cases, non-existent. And that's really

perplexing, isn't it? Because we know perfectionists put tremendous amount of effort forward. We know that they work really, really hard. And yet it doesn't seem that that hard work is translating into better performance. Now, there are two reasons we think this is happening. The first is that perfectionism do work hard, but they work too hard. So they sacrifice areas of their life that are rejuvenating, things like good sleep, good diet, exercise, time with friends. All of these things that we know are really important for success. They sacrifice. sacrifice. And so essentially they burn out. They just do really well at the beginning, but then run out of steam, get exhausted, and that impacts on their performance. But the second, the more

interesting reason why we think perfectionists struggle to perform is because there's a kind of paradox that's associated with perfectionism. So perfectionists will put everything forward and then some to succeed at things. But the moment they encounter difficulty or setback, or really challenging tasks that are almost certainly going to end in some kind of failure or defeat, they withdraw their effort. So when we put people in the lab and we give them a task, so we give them a cycle task that they should comfortably meet. So we say go, you know, you can cover this distance in this time.

And they really go hard on the first attempt. And then we tell them that they failed. You didn't meet that target. And then we ask them to go again. What you see with the perfectionist is on the second. trial, they just withhold all their effort. The non-perfectionists, they carry on. In fact, if anything, they put more effort in the next time. The perfectioners really drop off a cliff because the calculation in their minds you can't fail at something that you didn't try it.

And the anticipated guilt, shame is so severe in these individuals that once they know they may fail, they will withhold. And that's obviously not going to do any favors in terms of success and performance. This is why you see a lot of procrastination among perfectionists because it's kind of managing their anxiety, managing the anxiety of things not going well through avoidance and withdrawal. And again, we know things like procrastination, scrolling through social media, watching the latest Netflix documentary or whatever it might be, is not going to help when it comes to success and things like work. So it's really interesting when it comes to perfectionism and success. We know it's a lot of pain when it comes to mental health, but we,

also know it doesn't contribute to performance. So it's kind of all paying for no gain. And I think that's the biggest take home, really, that I want people to get from a book, The Perfection truck. So you mentioned your own background in sports, and I think this is a really interesting one, because most people play sports for fun with this idea of perfectionism.

And I mean, how does it fit into, say, competitiveness? Yeah, so perfectionist intensely high, competitive because at root perfectionism really is a social it occurs not within a vacuum within us but obviously in a social world and so the way that we are able to calibrate our own sense of you know place and how successful we are and how good we are is to position ourselves relative to other people so perfectionist can be really hyperpetitive and you see this a lot in sport which is why as you know sport was and kind of early interest of mind but also really interesting lens to view perfectionism because you can see things that occur in, you know, normal day-to-day life, but but happen to be

kind of amplified or maybe it's a good microscope into, you know, the broader effects of perfectionism. So we do a lot of work in sport looking at putting athletes and students into the lab, getting them to do athletic tasks against each other and seeing what happens. And what's really interesting is when you put athletes into the lab, you maybe manipulate failure. So let's say you get them to race against each other on a cycling task and you tell each one that they failed, what you tend to see in that competitive failure is those people who are higher on perfectionism have much more intense emotional reactions. So they feel a lot more shame than non-perfectionists. They feel a lot more guilt than non-perfectious. Their pride plummets after competitive failure.

And it's because that failure has exposed something, has exposed that they're inferior, that they're flawed and those are those flaws that they're desperately trying to conceal from the world. So sport is a really interesting microcosm and a useful lab to study effects of perfection. So let's have a look at the other oriented perfectionism then. So what do we know about what's going on psychologically there and what impact can that have? So other oriented perfectionism is really a projection of one's own perfectionism onto other people. So the kind of calculation going on in the other, or interperfection's mind is that if I'm dragging myself over colds

to be absolutely meticulous and perfect in everything that I do, and I'm feeling the emotional baggage that comes with that, then it's only fair that everyone else around me does the same. And so other oriented perfectionists are really punitive, they're really judgmental, and they expect others around them to have exactly the same excessive and impossible standards as them. Now, that's problematic both for the other orientate perfection of ourselves,

because nothing is ever good enough. And so they will never, ever gain any lasting satisfaction. But it's really problematic for the people who are the targets of the other or interperfectious eye because it creates toxic relationships. It creates a lot of resentment. And it creates a lot of dissatisfaction, particularly in the workplace. We see so much research showing that other oriented perfectionists are really problematic in the workplace.

They can create a lot of conflict among team members. And there's evidence that they can succeed initially, but the success often tapers off once people realize that the working practices are really problematic. So it doesn't even really contribute to lasting success either. So other into perfectionism is a really problematic form of perfectionism, particularly when it comes to relations. I mean, is there anything that say somebody is the target of this sort of behavior, you know, is there, is there anything that they can do?

Yeah, there's plenty they can do. I think the main thing is to be open and communicate that the expectations that you place on yourself and other team members are not the same and rationalise that the expectations that are being placed on you are impossible, that there is no way within the confines of time or even just the resources that were able to reach this standard. And I think that's so, so important in the workplace to be open to be to be communicative and also to give examples and bring people around. If there's one particular member who's a very strong, other oriented perfectionist, bring people in and have a group conversation and explain that these are issues that are

causing disharmony. I think that's one of the most important things you can do because bringing perfectionistic people around to reality is difficult, but absolutely crucial in terms of good relationships, not just with the other imperfections of cells, but also the broader team. I'm thinking mainly in the work context here. So sort of riffing off that a little bit. I think a lot of people, I think, will have a friend or a loved one who is perhaps struggling with perfectionism. What can we do to help them? So I mentioned self-compassion. I think it's so important. I've mentioned challenging what perfect means to you and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone little by little. But I think the most important thing, and this is where perfectionists really

struggle, is remembering that failure in perfection's flaws are really a humanizing presence of our existence. They are what makes us us. And instead of being humiliating, instead of being shameful reminders of how flawed we are, they're actually really joyous reminders of what it means to be a human. And I think if you're trying to communicate with a perfectionist who can't let things go is finding it really tough, particularly when things go wrong, to accept that this is just part and parcel of life, reminding them all the time, it's important to be open to failure, embrace it, don't push it down, don't squash it, don't try to change it into something else, just kind of sit with the feelings and emotions that that failure or setback brings.

Remind yourself at all times that this is just part and parcel of what it means to be a human, that life is not perfect, nobody's perfect, can ever be made perfect. And going through life, embracing those imperfections, embracing those failures, and trying where we can to sit comfortably next to them, even if at first it's going to be a bit difficult, it's really, really important. So I think talking to people who are perfectionists can remind them the failure is very humanising, not humiliating, I think it's really, really important. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius,

brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus, That was Thomas Curran, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at the London School of Economics, an author of The Perfection Trap, the power of good enough in a world that always wants more. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines, or download a digital copy from your preferred app store. You can, of course, also find us online at ScienceFavus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional digital. depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music, just as the

artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com.