Perfect enough to sleep? Perfectionism and markers of poor sleep
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2026
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Melbourne Authors
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Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
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PhD thesis
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Open Access
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© 2026 Susie Yen Peng Oh
Abstract
Insomnia or poor sleep in the form of inadequate sleep either in duration or quality is a prevalent and costly health condition. Perfectionism, a multidimensional personality construct, has been theorised to be a risk factor of insomnia. Both insomnia and perfectionism are transdiagnostic risk factors in mental health disorders. While studies have investigated the relationship between perfectionism and an individual’s subjective perceptions of sleep (such as duration, quality and so forth), there is a lack of research looking at the relationship between objective measures of sleep and perfectionism; and none based on actigraphy sleep study. Furthermore, no previous research has investigated whether perfectionism plays a role in the commonly experienced insomnia symptom of sleep-wake state discrepancy, and whether sleep can also impact on perfectionism.
This thesis aimed to investigate the potential relationships between sleep and perfectionism and explore the mediating influence of stress, arousal and sleep-related cognitions on these relationships. In study 1, a comprehensive study of the relationship between sleep and perfectionism was conducted using subjective and objective sleep measures obtained from sleep diary and actigraphy, respectively. This study found self-driven, higher levels of internalised perfectionistic concerns about making mistakes and having doubts about actions were associated with poorer subjective sleep. In comparison, externally driven perfectionistic concerns of perceived standards that others have for oneself (socially prescribed perfectionism), parental expectations and parental criticism related positively to objective measures of poor sleep and stress mediated those relationships.
In Study 2, the potential role that perfectionism may play in sleep-wake state discrepancy was explored. It was found that higher levels of perfectionistic concerns over mistakes and doubts about actions correlated with and predicted discrepancy in sleep onset latency via the mediating effect of cognitive pre-sleep arousal. Study 3 then investigated the day-to-day bidirectional relationships between sleep and perfectionism at both interindividual and intraindividual levels. Bidirectional relationships between sleep and perfectionism were found at the interindividual level, but not at the interindividual level. However, stress mediated the relationship from perfectionism to sleep quality at the intraindividual level. Stress also mediated the relationship from sleep to perfectionism at the interindividual level.
Together, this thesis contributes new evidence to the existing literature that perfectionism is a risk factor of insomnia. It also highlights stress and pre-sleep arousal as underlying mediators in those relationships. These findings have important clinical and research implications in the assessment and treatment of poor sleep, suggesting that the different facets of perfectionism affect sleep differently and provide nuanced insights into how perfectionism affect sleep. In clinical practice, perfectionism should be assessed as a risk factor for insomnia. If perfectionism is identified as a potential driver of poor sleep, managing perfectionistic concerns, stress and pre-sleep arousal become important treatment considerations that can impact on the treatment process and therapy efficacy.
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Perfectionism, Concern over mistakes, Doubts about action, Socially prescribed perfectionism, Stress, Insomnia, Actigraphy, Sleep health, Sleep-wake state discrepancy, Sleep misperception, Sleep disturbance, Poor sleep, Objective sleep, Subjective sleep, Day-to-day intraindividual sleep variability