Perfectionism in the Transition to University: Comparing Diathesis-Stress and Downward Spiral Models of Depressive Symptoms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Transitioning to university may be especially difficult for students who expect perfection from themselves. Self-critical perfectionism has consistently been linked to poor mental health. The current study compares a diathesis-stress and a downward-spiral model to determine why self-critical perfectionism is detrimental for mental health during this transition. First-year students ( N = 658) were recruited before beginning university in August and contacted again in October, January, and April. Participants completed measures on perfectionism, stress, and depressive symptoms. Evidence was found for a downward-spiral model with self-critical perfectionism but not a diathesis-stress model. Students higher in self-critical perfectionism were more likely to experience increased stress and depressive symptoms in a circular and additive manner. Conversely, students higher in personal-standards perfectionism experienced less stress and subsequent depressive symptoms. This research provides a theoretical model for why self-critical perfectionism is related to poor mental-health outcomes that become sustained over time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".