Alcohol And Substance Use Symptom Differences Between Classes Of Perfectionists

We examined how multidimensional perfectionism is associated with the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-3 (SASSI-3; Miller & Lazowski, 1999) among a sample of 428 undergraduate students. Latent profile analysis based on measures of perfectionism and perceived stress supported a four-class model (i.e., adaptive perfectionists, mixed perfectionists, nonperfectionists, and maladaptive perfectionists). Overall, adaptive perfectionists reported fewer alcohol and substance use-related symptoms, whereas maladaptive perfectionists reported higher alcohol and substance use-related symptoms. In addition, according to the SASSI-3 overall classification rule screening for low or high risk of an alcohol or substance use disorder, adaptive perfectionists were the least likely to be classified in the high-risk category, whereas maladaptive perfectionists were the most likely to be classified in the high-risk category.