Abstract
PURPOSE: This research investigated factors affecting statistics anxiety in university students to find out whether perfectionists are at greater risk of experiencing it. This topic is known to be amongst the most anxiety-provoking matter among undergraduate students in the social sciences, humanities, and psychology. Herein, we sought to better characterize the aims and strivings of subgroups of students with regard to statistics. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: A final sample of 210 participants answered questionnaires measuring statistics anxiety, perfectionism and excellencism, academic goals, emotion regulation strategies, attitude towards statistics, and statistical ability. RESULTS: The results show that participants better able to discriminate affirmations of flawlessness from affirmations of excellence report lower anxiety in interpreting statistics. Excellencists endorse more mastery-oriented academic goals, less avoidance-oriented goals, and favor adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Profile analysis shows that for the perfectionism-oriented profile, anxiety to interpret statistics correlates positively with avoidance goals whereas for excellencists, it correlates negatively with mastery goals. Further, excellencists who show high anxiety to interpret statistics tend to use less adaptive emotion regulations strategies while perfectionists tend to use more maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. CONCLUSION: One outstanding result is that discriminating flawless wordings from wordings aiming at excellence is a main determinant in keeping positive attitude in anxiety-triggering courses.