Perfectionism in India Compared to America: A Cross-Cultural Internet-Based Assessment

Perfectionism is conceptualized as a multidimensional personality construct, but has not been extensively studied cross-culturally. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) lets users complete online questionnaires, collecting data that can provide an international sample, taking advantage of MTurk as a cross-cultural research tool. Indians represent the second-largest proportion of MTurk users behind Americans and presented a unique opportunity to examine cross-cultural differences. India represents a growing and increasingly influential global economy. The current study assessed perfectionism in Indians via MTurk and compared scores on multidimensional perfectionism scales to an American sample. Mean differences on perfectionism subscales indicated that Indians scored higher than Americans on Concern Over Mistakes, Perceived Parental Pressure, and Striving for Excellence, while Americans scored higher than Indians on Planfulness and Need for Approval. Neither sample was nationally representative, as the Indian sample overrepresented males, urban citizens, and individuals with higher education and income, and the American sample overrepresented Caucasians and females. Scale score differences were influenced by disparities in demographic variable distributions such as gender, education, income, and religious affiliation. Future studies would likely benefit from considering more representative samples as well as the latent structure of perfectionism in Indian samples.