Perfectionist Personality and Marital Relationship: a systematic review

Abstract

The perfectionist personality trait is defined as a set of thoughts that strive for perfection and set excessively high standards of performance and is highly related to impacts on personal relationships. Considering the possible impacts that these characteristics may have in relation to conjugality, investigate the possibility that personality traits are associated with marital quality. Therefore, a systematic literature review was carried out with the aim of verifying the relationships between the dimensions of the perfectionist personality trait and the marital relationship in empirical studies. The review was carried out following PRISMA guidelines. The following descriptors were consulted as databases: “perfectionism”, “personality” and “conjugality” and their equivalents in English, complete studies published between the years of 2015 and 2020 were selected. Three articles composed this research. demonstrated that perfectionism can have an adaptive and/or maladaptive character and that the dimensions of the perfectionist personality trait, as well as other personal variables, impact on marital specification satisfaction levels. These findings support the need to include the study of perfectionism in the context of marital relationships, as well as interventions at the level of prevention and treatment for marital quality.