Multidimensional perfectionism and sleep: the roles of sleep-interfering and interpreting processes

Abstract

This project involved creating a research poster for my Honors Senior Thesis. It was a long personal journey that helped me better understand myself and the future career that I want. Being a psychology major, partaking in research, creating a poster, and presenting it at a regional conference is an important culmination of my time at Ball State University. The research poster that I worked on was designed to examine the role of multidimensional perfectionism on sleep in college students as such research can help inform intervention strategies that could target the underlying mechanisms disrupting poor sleep in this population. Given that I intend to work as a mental health counselor in the future, this information would be beneficial for me to be able to best help potential clients. After data collection and analyses, I found that pre-sleep arousal mediated the relationship between perfectionistic concerns and poor sleep. However, dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs about sleep did not mediate the relationship between perfectionistic strivings and poor sleep. Suggesting that intervention strategies could be used to target this factor in order to improve student sleep quality. In this Honors Senior Thesis, I learned a lot of valuable information about data collection, how to interpret data, and the work that goes into presenting research. As I had the opportunity to present my project at the Midwestern Psychological Association conference in April 2023.