Socially Prescribed Perfectionism: The Pressure of Feeling Everyone Expects Perfection From You

Socially prescribed perfectionism: when the pressure comes (or seems to come) from outside

Socially prescribed perfectionism is the third dimension in Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett’s model, and the one research most consistently links to emotional distress.

Here the exigency doesn’t mainly come from within. It comes from the feeling that your surroundings (family, work, social media) expect a level of perfection that’s hard to sustain, and that falling short will have a cost: disappointing people, losing their regard, being left out.

It’s one of the four profiles our perfectionism test tells apart. If the exigency feels more like something you impose on yourself, the closest profile is self-oriented perfectionism.

Perceived exigency

What sets this profile apart isn’t how much exigency there really is in your surroundings, but how much you perceive. In Hewitt and Flett’s original scale (1991), the items for this dimension don’t ask what other people demand, but what the person believes they demand: that success is always expected, that any mistake will be badly received, that the better you do something, the better it’s expected to turn out next time.

That last idea explains why this kind of perfectionism tends to be more exhausting than the other two. The person doesn’t feel in control of the standard, because someone else sets it, and on top of that they perceive it as a bar that keeps moving.

Why it’s the type most closely tied to distress

Research on perfectionism distinguishes between perfectionistic strivings (setting high goals) and perfectionistic concerns (fear of error, doubts, fear of other people’s judgment). Socially prescribed perfectionism belongs squarely to the second group.

The meta-analysis by Limburg, Watson, Hagger and Egan (2017), which pooled studies on perfectionism and various mental health problems, found that perfectionistic concerns show clearer links with anxiety, depression and stress than perfectionistic strivings alone. That a dimension is associated with distress doesn’t mean it causes it, or that everyone with this profile suffers from it: it describes a tendency across large groups.

A dimension that is growing

The most cited figure about this profile is recent. In 2019, Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill pooled the results of 164 samples covering more than 41,000 college students in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom who had completed Hewitt and Flett’s scale between 1989 and 2016.

• All three dimensions increased over time.
• The one that grew the most was the socially prescribed dimension: by around 33%, compared with 10% for the self-oriented one and 16% for the other-oriented one.

In a later study (2022), the same authors found that perceived parental expectations and criticism have also increased over those decades and are strongly related to this dimension. Both studies are correlational: they show trends that coincide, not a proven cause.

How it shows up day to day

A common scene: someone gets an email from their manager that just says “Let’s talk tomorrow.” There’s nothing more, but the afternoon fills up with theories about what they might have done wrong. The next day, the conversation turns out to be about a schedule change.

That pattern takes other forms:

• Trouble relaxing: the feeling of always being under some kind of evaluation, even when nobody is actually watching.
• Criticism carries outsized weight: a minor negative comment hits much harder than its content would justify.
• Constant search for approval: even in small decisions.
• Fear of “not measuring up”: the central worry isn’t the result itself, but what it will say about you in front of others.

The gap between real and perceived expectations

Because what this dimension measures is a perception, part of its weight depends on the gap between what you believe others expect and what they really expect. Many people with this profile discover, when they ask directly, that the pressure they felt far exceeded anything anyone had actually expressed.

Something similar happens with comparisons: what you see of other people, especially on social media, is usually a highly curated version of their lives, not their full day-to-day. Comparing your own process with someone else’s polished end result is rarely a fair comparison.

What this result doesn’t say

This article is informational, and the test that goes with it is a short self-report, not Hewitt and Flett’s original scale or a diagnosis. If the perceived pressure becomes constant and hard to sustain, a psychology professional can help assess it.

Sources

• Curran, T. and Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, 145(4), 410-429. doi:10.1037/bul0000138
• Curran, T. and Hill, A. P. (2022). Young people’s perceptions of their parents’ expectations and criticism are increasing over time: Implications for perfectionism. Psychological Bulletin, 148(1-2), 107-128. doi:10.1037/bul0000347
• Hewitt, P. L. and Flett, G. L. (1991). Perfectionism in the self and social contexts: Conceptualization, assessment, and association with psychopathology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(3), 456-470.
• Limburg, K., Watson, H. J., Hagger, M. S. and Egan, S. J. (2017). The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73(10), 1301-1326.