ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1378482
Questionable prospective effect of perfectionism on depression: Reanalysis of a meta-analytic cross-lagged panel analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden
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Background: A recent meta-analysis claimed increasing prospective effects between perfectionism and depressive symptoms. However, the effects were estimated while adjusting for a prior measurement of the outcome variable and it is known that such adjusted cross-lagged effects may be spurious due to correlations with residuals and regression to the mean.Method: We reanalyzed the same meta-analytic data as in the challenged study with alternative regression models.Results: Alternative models indicated contradictory increasing and decreasing prospective effects of perfectionism on depressive symptoms.Conclusion: The present divergent findings suggested that the prospective effect of perfectionism on depressive symptoms may have been spurious. Consequently, the conclusions in the challenged meta-analysis, and the vulnerability model of perfectionism and depressive symptoms in general, can be called into question. It is important for researchers to be aware of the limitations of cross-lagged panel analyses, and of correlations in general, in order not to overinterpret findings.
Keywords: depressive symptoms, Meta-analysis, overinterpretation of findings, perfectionism, reanalysis, spurious cross-lagged effects, vulnerability model
Received: 29 Jan 2024; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sorjonen and Melin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kimmo Sorjonen, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden
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