The Effects of Other-Oriented Perfectionism and Conscientiousness on Helping at Work

Workers high in other-oriented perfectionism have unreasonable standards for others and place considerable importance on others meeting these standards. Although other-oriented perfectionism is thought to be maladaptive, we investigated whether other-oriented perfectionists might help others achieve the high standards that they set for them by engaging in task-focused interpersonal citizenship behaviors (ICB). We suggest that the relationship between an individual's other-oriented perfectionism tendencies and his or her task-focused ICB is non-linear. Furthermore and in line with trait interactionist theory, we argue that an individual's conscientiousness moderates the other-oriented perfectionism-task focused ICB relationship. As hypothesised, data from 154 employees of a public sector organisation, using self-reports of personality and supervisor reports of task-focused ICB, revealed that increases in other-oriented perfectionism for workers high in conscientiousness generally led to those employees engaging in greater levels of task-focused ICB. However, there were diminishing returns at high levels of other-oriented perfectionism. The opposite was found amongst workers low in conscientiousness. Thus, we conclude that conscientiousness brings out a bright side of other-oriented perfectionism.