ImplicitifyAI
Clinical instrument

Perfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts

Perfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Perfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts.

You learn how much perfectionism and unwanted thoughts go together for you.

For anyone who holds themselves to exacting standards and replays mistakes.

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Pay $4 before you start. The full report and PDF are included.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from clinical personality research linking perfectionism with unwanted repetitive thoughts.

Example score on the scale rangeChart drawn with invented example scores; not a real result.Example dataLower rangeMiddle rangeHigher rangePerfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts
Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Perfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Perfectionism and Intrusive Thoughts.

The measure

It has 10 items, each answered on a 5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate) scale.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org).

At a glance

Items
10
Response scale
5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate)
Est. time
~1 min
Access
Pay before you start · $4, or $2 to repeat · full report and PDF included

What it measures

Ten statements describe a pattern of exacting standards and unwanted thoughts: needing things to be done perfectly, being bothered by small mistakes, going over things again and again, and having thoughts that come to mind against one's will and are hard to dismiss. The two features often occur together.

Frost, Marten, Lahart and Rosenblate (1990) described perfectionism as several related tendencies, including high personal standards and concern over mistakes. Rachman and de Silva (1978) showed that unwanted intrusive thoughts are common in the general population and differ from clinical obsessions mainly in frequency and distress. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe stronger perfectionism and more frequent intrusive thoughts; lower scores describe greater ease with imperfection and fewer unwanted thoughts. High scores can accompany careful, conscientious work as well as distress.

The scale is used in research on perfectionism, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. On this site, the Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms scale describes checking, washing and ordering, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) measures worry, and the Under-Pressure Personality Profile includes a Diligent style that can become perfectionism under stress.

Validity evidence

Perfectionism and intrusive ideation are transdiagnostic risk factors associated with OCD, eating disorders, and depression; constructs have strong convergent validity with clinical measures in meta-analytic reviews.

Example item

“Question my ability to do my work properly.”

Very InaccurateModerately InaccurateNeither Accurate nor InaccurateModerately AccurateVery Accurate

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.

References

  1. Frost, R. O., Marten, P., Lahart, C., & Rosenblate, R. (1990). The dimensions of perfectionism. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 14(5), 449-468.
  2. Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory. Personality Psychology in Europe, 7, 7-28.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
SectionWhat it shows
ScoreYour scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
ComparisonsHow your scores compare with a published comparison group.

The test and full report with a downloadable copy are $4.

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