The Unforgiving Flawlessness

“Standards of perfection have an important impact on the process of creation,” explained study author Jean- Christophe Goulet-Pelletier, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa. “It affects the motivation, emotions, and behaviors of individual...

“Many questions need to be addressed,” Goulet-Pelletier explained. “Our study did not specifically identify which mechanism explained the detrimental effect of perfectionism on creative thinking abilities. Moreover, creativity and perfectionism are expressed different...

“Striving for perfection over and above excellence is likely to limit experimentation, spontaneity, and openness,” the study authors wrote. “Relaxing the perfection constraint means changing the narrative so that it becomes ‘okay if it isn’t always perfect’ (Nord...

A team of researchers from the University of Ottawa proposed that these contrasting expectations might be explained by a distinction between striving for excellence and perfection. Their reasoning was based on a theory developed by one of the st...

The researchers note several reasons why perfectionism might block creativity. For one, perfectionists may be overly motivated to find quick and perfect solutions, leading them to focus on conventional strategies and to avoid new and uncertain ones. Secondly, being u...

Perfectionists are people who strive for flawlessness, set intensely high standards for themselves, and are highly critical of their own behavior. While perfectionism has been the subject of much research, it remains unclear how the concept relates to