The Relationship Between Positive and Negative Perfectionism and Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Academic Rumination

Perfectionism as a personality trait can lead to students depression. It seems that academic rumination in the relationship between perfectionism and depression play a role of mediator in academic settings. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of positive and negative perfectionism with depressive symptoms mediated by academic rumination.Patients and The sample comprised 368 undergraduate students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz in 2011 - 2012 academic year. They were randomly selected by multi-stage sampling method. The data were collected by 3 measures of positive and negative perfectionism scale (PANPS), beck depression inventory-II (BDI- II), and academic rumination inventory (ARI). Preliminary analyses revealed that positive perfectionism was negatively correlated with both depressive symptoms and academic rumination and had a significant negative correlation with negative perfectionism. Also, negative perfectionism was positively correlated with both depressive symptoms and academic rumination. Furthermore, academic rumination was positively correlated with depressive symptoms. The results of path analysis showed academic rumination mediated the relationship of positive and negative perfectionism with depressive symptoms. According to this model, students with high score on negative perfectionism by mechanism of academic rumination report higher depressive symptoms, however students with high score on positive perfectionism report lower depressive symptoms through reduction of ruminative thoughts.