Maladaptive coping and self-esteem as mediators between perfectionism and psychological distress

This study with 508 Korean college students examined the mediation effects of maladaptive coping styles and self-esteem on the links of evaluative concerns perfectionism and psychological distress. Structural equation modeling analyses supported a full mediation effect of maladaptive coping between evaluative concerns perfectionism and distress. The final model also revealed a significant path from evaluative concerns perfectionism through maladaptive coping and self-esteem to distress. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis found that male college students with evaluative concerns perfectionism tend to use maladaptive coping strategies more compared to their female counterparts. The findings provided not only external validity for the full mediation effect of coping but also evidence of more complex relations among the variables.