A Randomized Test of Interpretation Bias Modification for Perfectionism Versus Guided Visualization Relaxation among High Perfectionistic Undergraduate Students

Clinical perfectionism contributes to the onset and mainte-nance of multiple psychological concerns. We conducted a randomized, longitudinal test of the efficacy of a web -based intervention for perfectionism (specifically, cognitive bias modification, interpretation retraining; CBM-I), com-pared to an active treatment comparison condition (specif-ically, guided visualization relaxation training) for reducing perfectionism and related psychopathology. Col-lege students (N = 167) with elevated perfectionism were randomized to one of the two study conditions and were asked to complete their assigned intervention twice weekly for 4 weeks. Participants completed measures of perfec-tionism and psychological symptoms at baseline, 2 weeks (midway through the intervention period), 4 weeks (at the conclusion of the intervention period), and 8 weeks (1 month follow-up). CBM-I was rated as acceptable over-all, though relaxation training was rated slightly more favorably. CBM-I outperformed relaxation training on improving perfectionism-relevant interpretation biases (i.e., increasing nonperfectionistic interpretations and decreasing perfectionistic interpretations), though with small effect sizes and inconsistency across study time -points. Self-reported perfectionism showed small decreases across time in both intervention conditions. Support was found for a key hypothesized mechanism of CBM-I, such that randomization to CBM-I had a longitudinal, indirect effect on decreasing psychopathology symptom scores through improving perfectionism-relevant interpretation biases. However, in light of small effect sizes, the present study failed to provide compelling evidence that CBM-I for perfectionism contributes meaningfully to the treatment of perfectionism.