Under Pressure to Be Perfect: How Dehumanizing and Rehumanizing Social Cues Lead to Maladaptive and Adaptive Perfectionism in Professional Ballet

Research on workplace perfectionism has focused on harmful consequences of workers’ perfectionism. However, perfectionism is not a uniform experience. Maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism have different outcomes for worker performance and well-being. While perfectionism appears especially prevalent in high performance pressure environments, minimal research has examined how social cues shape workers’ experience of perfectionism. Through an inductive study of professional ballet dancers facing extreme performance pressure, we discovered that social cues influence whether people experience maladaptive or adaptive perfectionism. We found that organizational dehumanizing cues elicited perfectionistic concerns and increased self-destructive behaviors, leading to a vicious cycle of maladaptive perfectionism and an increased likelihood of breakdowns at work. However, rehumanizing cues precipitated a shift toward adaptive perfectionism characterized by perfectionistic strivings and self-compassionate behaviors. We also show how workers can shift back and forth between maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism cycles throughout their careers. We reveal new insights at the intersection of high performance pressure, dehumanization, and perfectionism, offering dehumanization and rehumanization as key mechanisms linking the environment and perfectionism. We also discuss how our findings, though in an extreme context, apply to other high-pressure workplace environments, and open new opportunities to explore the processes of maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism in other domains.