Brianna Luis

Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cottrell, Catherine

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

This thesis asserts that Neoliberal capitalism fosters an overly demanding and competitive sociocultural environment that compels individuals to internalize self-enhancement values and to develop individualistic senses of agency and harshly meritocratic worldviews. In such an objectively demanding cultural atmosphere, individuals may develop perfectionistic tendencies to maintain a sense of belonging and worthiness. Given recent empirical evidence that has attributed a longitudinal rise in perfectionism to the increasing prevalence of Neoliberalism in the Western world, the current study sought to discern whether there are associations among trait levels of perfectionism (i.e., self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed dimensions), the endorsement of capitalistic self-enhancement values (i.e., power and achievement), and attributes that characterize individuals immersed within Neoliberal capitalism (i.e., individualistic self-construal and meritocratic beliefs). Recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, 84 participants from the United States (U.S.) and 73 from the United Kingdom (U.K.) completed selfreport questionnaires intended to measure each of these constructs. In support of my hypotheses, correlational analyses revealed that (a) individuals who more strongly endorsed self-enhancement values were more likely to show elevated levels of self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism, (b) participants who were more competitively individualistic were more perfectionistic across all three trait dimensions, (c) individuals who displayed stronger meritocratic beliefs by indicating greater endorsement of the importance of hard work, personal responsibility, and self-discipline were also more perfectionistic across all three trait dimensions, and (d) participants from the U.S., where Neoliberal ideology is slightly more pervasive, were more perfectionistic than those from the U.K. This research contributes to the larger body of literature exploring the influence of broad sociocultural systems on individuals’ inter- and intra-psychic processes. Indeed, these results carry implications for those hoping to mitigate the epidemic of mental dysfunction plaguing developed nations.

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