Cause and Effect

My topic is perfectionism. Although perfectionism isn't the sole cause to an effect such as mentos are to diet pepsi; perfectionism is a huge contributor to certain effects. Here is my cause and effect description.Perfectionism is a cause of eating disorders. The cause of perfectionism leads to many effects such as physical and psychological changes to your body. All of these causes lead to one effect which is a change in your personality.

If I were to create a chain of causes it would go as follows: Increasing Perfectionist Trait ---> Eating Disorder ---> Unhealthy Weight Loss, Internal Damage, Physical Appearance Changes, Depression, Plummeting Self-Esteem ---> Personality Changes Such As Narcissism, Depressive ---> Encourages Higher Perfectionism ---> etc. It's an ugly vicious cycle, but it's real.

Fairburn, Christopher G., and Kelly D. Brownell. "Eating Disorders and Obesity: A Comprehensive Handbook." books.google.com. Guilford Press, 2002. Web. 9 Mar 2011.<http://books.google.com/books?id=rNbdAGVNIh0C&dq=perfectionism+cause +and+effect&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s>.

Cynthia M. Bulik, Federica Tozzi, Charles Anderson, Suzanne E. Mazzeo, Steve Aggen, and Patrick F. Sullivan. The Relation Between Eating Disorders and Components of Perfectionism. Am J Psychiatry, Feb 2003; 160: 366 - 368.

Is there normal perfectionism?

The focus of my paper has changed to the negative effects of perfectionism. I always believed it to be a good quality and wanted to focus on both the negative and positive effects of perfectionism. However, I quickly learned that perfectionism is NOT a good trait to have. It leads to many physical and mental problems and can be debilitating for a person. For this post we needed to find atleast to sources who opposed our view. Let me tell you, that was challenging! It was a stretch to find two good scholarly articles. But it was done.

I found a really good article that helped put into words (better than I could have ever come up with) about the difference between 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' perfectionism. They mention a few times throughout the article the differences: striving for perfectionism and striving for excellence are two different things, 'I feel good by dedicating myself to a certain task' is much different than 'I like to please other people by being successful'. There is still much research going on but seeing as the source is highly credible I believe that there is 'good' and 'bad' perfectionism. You can decide to strive to do your best, or you can stive for the impossible.

It is shown in evidence that people who have positive perfectionist tendencies also have positive characteristics about them. Although not much research has been done whether positive perfectionism is a cause of nature or nurture, it is thought that one can learn to be a normal perfectionist. They can adapt it over a period of time. In the psychology world, the idea of both negative and postive psychology came up and was researched minimally before decideing that perfectionism was a neurotic disorder and was always negative. Now it is being researched again and there are hopes instead of destroying one's perfectionistic tendencies that they can change to develope positive perfectionistic characteristics.

http://kar.kent.ac.uk/4481/1/Stoeber_&_Otto_PositiveConceptions_2006.pdf

Flett, Gordon L., and Paul L. Hewitt. "Positive Versus Negative Perfectionism in Psychopathology." Behavior Modification 30.4 (2006): 472-495. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 5 Mar. 2011.