Perfectionism and Loneliness as Predictors of Depressive and Anxious Symptoms in African American Adults: Further Evidence for a Top-Down Additive Model.

In the present study, I used a top-down approach to examine perfectionism and loneliness as additive predictors of depressive and anxious symptoms in a sample of 168 African American college students. Consistent with expectations, I found perfectionism and loneliness to be associated with both depressive and anxious symptoms. In addition, results of conducting hierarchical regression analyses indicated that certain dimensions of perfectionism, especially doubts about actions, accounted for significant variance in both depressive and anxious symptoms. Moreover, the inclusion of loneliness as a predictor was found to account for additional unique variance in both depressive and anxious symptoms, beyond what was accounted for by perfectionism. Implications of the present findings for future research on negative affective conditions in African American adults are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]