Journal of Counseling Research

Aim: The present research was aimed to determine the relationship between normal and neurotic perfectionism, and self-handicapping and its subscales (negative mood, effort, and excuse-making) among male university students. Method: The method of the current research was descriptive-correlational. Total of 350 male post-graduate students from University of Tehran were selected by cluster sampling method. The participants completed the Jones & Rhodewalt Self-Handicapping Scale (1982) and the Terry-Short, Owens, Slade, and Dewey's Perfectionism Scale (1995). The collected data was analyzed through Pearson linear correlation and linear regression analysis. Results: Normal perfectionism showed a significant negative correlation with self-handicapping and components of negative mood and excuse-making, and there was a positive and significant relationship between normal perfectionism and the effort component. On the other hand, neurotic perfectionism had a significant negative relationship with self-handicapping and components of negative mood and excuse-making, but it showed no significant relationship with the component of effort. Also, normal and neurotic perfectionism concurrently showed the most prediction power for negative mood, the total self-handicapping, excuse-making, and effort, respectively. Conclusions: With increase in students' scores in domain of normal perfectionism, their self-handicapping behaviors seems to decrease, while an increase in their neurotic perfectionism scores appears to correlate with increased self-handicapping behaviors. It is also possible to directly predict the students' self-handicapping through normal and neurotic dimensions of perfectionism.