Parenting behaviors and trait perfectionism: A meta-analytic test of the social expectations and social learning models

The social expectations model posits that children become perfectionistic in response to the contingent self-worth associated with parental expectations and parental criticism. Alternatively, the social learning model contends children emulate their parents’ perfectionistic tendencies through observation and imitation. However, inconsistent findings and underpowered studies have obscured understanding of these important models. We addressed this by conducting the first meta-analytic test of the social expectations and social learning models. Our search yielded 46 studies (N = 13,364). Results showed parental expectations had unique positive relationships with self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism. In contrast, parental criticism was only uniquely associated with socially prescribed perfectionism. Additionally, parents’ self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism displayed one-to-one correspondence with offspring's self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism.