UC Irvine

For years, one of the areas of study of many researchers has been social relationships. It is clear that we are social beings and live in a completely social world, relating and communicating continuously with other people, and these connections involve a multitude of factors that determine our behavior. While it is true that there are many lines of study of a very wide variety, there are some that focus on internal factors of the individual such as perfectionism (Fletcher & Shim, 2019; Öngen, 2009; Taylor et al., 2016). Although it is a less studied link, data are showing the association between certain levels of perfectionism with aggressive responses in social relationships, whether with authorities, parents, or peers (Lacunza et al., 2019). When investigating this relationship, it is worth highlighting the importance of these determinants in the way we relate to others, the influence of certain internal factors, and the processes that occur to carry out the aggressive or non-aggressive behavior of a person in his or her social context. Recent studies with samples of Spanish youth (Vicent et al., 2018), based on the 2x2 Dispositional Perfectionism Model (Gaudreau & Thompson, 2010) indicate that high levels of aggressiveness (anger, hostility, and verbal and physical aggression) are strongly related to mixed perfectionism, with the combination of both being the most maladaptive. The present study explores the relationships between perfectionism, self-esteem, and fear of failing others in a sample of 230 young (148 girls and 82 boys) university students (20.7 years; SD = 2.63). Perfectionism, fear of failure, aggressiveness, and self-esteem were applied. Results concluded that girls show greater scores in perfectionism, fear of failure while boys showed greater scores on self-esteem and aggressive behavior.