The Effects of Perfectionism and Achievement Motivation on Academic Performance of Students

The issue of relationship between perfectionism, achievement motivation and academic performance of university students seems to be little discussed in the literature and needs to be investigated in greater detail. The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of perfectionism and achievement motivation on academic performance of university students. It was suggested that perfectionism and achievement motivation will predict academic performance. The sample consists of 231 students. Several methods were used in data collecting: the Perfectionism questionnaire of Garanyan, the Mehrabian Achieving Tendency Scale, method of analysis of products of activity and survey method for assessing academic satisfaction. The results show that two perfectionism parameters predict student academic performance: «High standards» and «Negative selection». Students with high personal standards achieve excellent results and become satisfied with it. Conversely, those students, who tends to focus on mistakes, also achieve excellent results, but stay unsatisfied with it. There is a high probability of occurrence and development of psychological disorders in this group. That is why a crucial implication of this study is that personal characteristics (especially, perfectionism) should be taken into account in analyzing student academic performance to provide a psychological support for these students.