THE CONNECTION OF PERFECTIONISM AND FLOW WITH ATHLETES OF A DIFFERENT PERFORMANCE LEVEL

Athletes often report on the experiences of absolute dedication and flow that represent an extraordinary experience and act motivatively. Motivation is a natural product of our essential desires and needs, and the flow as a mental state relieves us of fears of judgment, which can be a motivational component of the flow model. The aim of this research was to find out to what extent perfectionism and flow are present in a group of athletes, whether perfectionism and the flow experience are linked, and which socio-demographic variables they correlate with. The research involved 50 professional athletes with participation at all competitive levels, from local level competitions to world level competitions. The instruments applied are the Multidimensional scale of perfectionism, the Questionnaire of Flow, the Semi-Structured Interview and the Questionnaire on Socio-demographic Characteristics. Through interviews, we received data on situations and emotions during the flow experience, where close to 98% of the athletes stated that they were not aware of the flow experience during its occurrence, but they could retrospectively invoke that feeling which remained the greatest and lasting trophy of their success. Almost on all sub-scales of Multidimensional scale of perfectionism, athletes achieve higher results compared to the general population. The results of the research have shown that there is no correlation between the flow experience and perfectionism, except when it comes to the connection of the flow experience with concern due to errors and this relationship is negative.


INTRODUCTION
Perfectionism is usually defined as a tendency for infallibility in all aspects of life (Flett, Hewitt, 2002).Some authors consider that the perfectionism is a relationship that an individual makes with his environment, and the nature of that relationship depends on the type of support that serves to maintain a certain kind of perfectionist behavior.That's why they consider that perfectionism should be viewed more like a term that describes patterns of behaviour than as an immutable personality trait (Slade, Owens, 1998).
Not so long ago, in psychology, perfectionism was seen as a one-dimensional construct which could be a disturbing factor in all human functioning and achievement, but also a disturbing factor in the aspect of satisfaction with life and overall health (Beck et al., 1979;Accordino et al., 2000Ashby, Rice, 2002).However, with recent research, many concepts of per-fectionism have been developed which have multi-dimensionality as a common thread (Frost et al., 1990;Flett end Hewitt, 2002;Bieling, Israeli, Antony, 2004).However, results of the research which studied perfectionism as a multi-dimensional concept have shown that perfectionism does not bring a priori to negative outcomes, but can also have a positive impact on human functioning and achievement.Accordingly, the so-called positive and negative perfectionism are distinguished (Hamachek, 1978;Stoeber, Otto, 2006;Fedewa, Burns, Gomez, 2005).Terry-Short, Owens, Slade and Dewey (1995), among others, suggest the theoretical basis for the difference between positive and negative perfectionism, the so-called a dual process model of perfectionism.According to these authors, the difference can be explained in accordance with Skiner's behavioral perspective that emphasizes the function of a certain behavior.Accordingly, the differences between the positive and the negative aspects of perfectionism are not in the behavior itself, but rather result from different motivations in their basis.Positive perfectionism refers to cognitions and behaviors aimed at achieving high goals, in order to achieve positive consequences, and it is encouraged by positive support and the desire for success.Negative perfectionism refers to cognitions and behaviors aimed at achieving high goals in order to avoid negative consequences, and is encouraged by negative support and fear of failure, therefore is often accompanied by fear, too high standards and frustrations.Frost et al. (1990) distinguishes the following dimensions of perfectionism: excessively high personal standards, concern about performance errors, the suspicion of the quality of personal performance, the perception of parental expectations and parental criticality, and the excessive need for precision, organization and order, resulting in the construction of Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, MPS-F) (Frost et.al, 1990).
The author Czikszentmihalyi describes flow as a complete commitment to one activity.The state of the flow is accompanied by an extraordinary concentration, the focus of attention is only on a given activity, and the person experiences a feeling of happiness and pleasure at the same time (Csikszentmihalyi, 2006).There are several factors that stimulate the state of flow: clear goals of unambiguous feedback and the balance between capabilities and tasks.Ceja and Navaro (Ceja, Navaro, 2009) argue that there are other factors that can influence the occurrence of flow: the greater possibility that requests are experienced as challenges, and not as a threat, and a feeling of coherence and meaning.According to Baumann and Scheffer (Baumann, Scheffer, 2010), the predictive circumstance of experiencing flow is given to individuals with a motive for achieving the flow.The motive for achieving flow is derived from various actions that individuals have learned to apply in specific situations, and are made up of two motives: a motive to look for challenges and a motive to solve problems.
In flow, there are several dimensions that characterize or contribute to this feeling (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).These factors are as follows: 1) A challenging activity that requires skills or a balance between opportunities and challenges; 2) State of mind and activity; 3) Loss of self awareness -the flow requires maximum concentration and focus on a particular activity; 4) Clear Goals -help to complete commitment to particular activity; 5) Concentration and focusing -it involves dealing with certain ac-tivities that at the given moments require complete commitment, which at the same time does not allow the thinking about anything else; 6) A sense of control over the situation -people do not enjoy being in control, but in the sense of achieving control in difficult situations.A feeling of flow is also the feeling that a certain skill is completely ruled.7) A changed sense of time -the subjective sense of time during the flow does not look like a real, objectively measured time; 8) Feedback, a direct and immediate reaction to stimulation -success and failure are obvious in the activity, so that behavior can be adapted to the new situation in time; 9) Activity itself is rewarding -satisfaction arises from performing certain activities.It is about intrinsic motivation, which does not require any external rewards.
On the basis of everything that has been said about perfectionism and the flow experience, it is clear why these concepts are closely related to sports.Sports activities, especially those related to professional sports which involve competitive activities, at the same time involve high abilities, a tendency to be the best and an attempt to outperform any established personal or external standard.On the other hand, well trained, high intrinsic motivation and complete dedication are often the correlates of the flow experience and often present in sports.
Therefore athletes are constantly facing dilemmas because: (according to Bajraktarević, 2008): • an athlete can (and should) be unique and unrepeatable, but at the same time he is expected and asked to be like everyone else; • an athlete needs to prove as much as possible superiority over his opponent, but to respect him at the same time; • an athlete should set his competitive aspirations very high and very real at the same time.It is exactly internal conflicts that athletes have in trying to respond to demands during the achievement of competitive results that causes greater anxiety and the need for constant growth and development of cognitive, emotional and personality traits that can contribute to success in sports.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine whether perfectionism is present through its multidimensional constructs in athletes, whether the flow is related to sporting situations and in what connection the flow experience and perfectionism defined as a multi-dimensional construct are.

Respondents
The research involved 50 athletes of different performance categories.The sample consisted of 38 (76%) male respondents and 12 (24%) female respondents, the average age of 23 (М=22,80 (16-41); N=50) The average length of the sports service is 12 years (M = 11.68,N = 50).The largest number of respondents, 100% of them, participated in local level competitions, 98% participated in national level competitions, 94% of respondents participated in international level competitions, while 38% participated in the world level competitions (N = 50).The survey was conducted in November and December 2013, on a sample from the South-West Serbia.The data were collected during home visits or visiting clubs of respondents.

Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale
The multidimensional perfectionism scale (MPS-F; Frost et.1995) consists of 35 claims that measure perfectionism through six dimensions.Dimension Personal Standards is conceived as very high personal standards and the overriding importance attached to these high standards in self-evaluation.Dimension Concerns about errors is conceived as negative reactions to errors, the tendency to interpret the error as equal to failures, and the tendency to believe that a person will lose respect of others after the failure.A tendency towards the belief that parents of some athletes set high goals and that they are overly critical comprise the dimension Parental Expectations, or Parental Objections.Dimension Suspicion in personal performances is described as a feeling of insecurity in personal actions or thinking, and as a tendency to feel that tasks are not satisfactorily completed.Emphasis on importance and preference of order and organization constitutes the last component of perfectionism, called Organization.The scale has satisfactory reliability, and the coefficient of internal coincidence ranges from 0.77 to 0.93 in our study α = 0.81.According to the obtained results, the subscales show satisfactory reliability: Concerns about errors -0.85; Organization -0.87; Parental expectations -0.79;Personal standards -0.79; Suspicion in personal performances -0.77; Parental objections -0.60.The respondent responds by evaluating the degree of agreement with individual items on the 5-degree Likert's type scale (from 1 -I completely agree to 5 -I completely disagree).The total score is calculated as the sum of the matching points with individual items on all subscales except for the subscale Organization.Items related to Organization are not taken into account when calculating the overall scale result due to the low correlations of that subscale with other subscales, as well as with the sum of all the items of perfectionism scale.

The flow experience questionnaire
Flow experience questionnaire authors Csikszentmihaly & Csikszentmihaly, 1988, consists of 11 claims, but due to the specificity of the sample, we selected the six items we used in this study.In order to leave the space for supplementing the state of flow through a semi-structured interview, by adjusting the questionnaire we tended to increase the objectivity of the results.The reliability of the flow questionnaire restructured for this study was checked by the coefficient of internal coexistence, and the custom questionnaire has satisfactory reliability with α = 0,891.The respondent responds by evaluating the degree of agreement with individual items on the 5-degree Likert's type scale (from 1 -does not look like me to at all to 5 -very similar to me).The total result is equal to the sum of the values given by the respondent.

Semi-structured interview
In order to get a fuller picture of the respondents and their ability to reach the state of flow, we used a semi-structured interview.During the research, respondents reported on their own experiences, feelings and activities when performing.

Questionnaire on sociodemographic features
The questionnaire was designed for the research purposes.Through this questionnaire, we tried to get basic information about athletes such as the category of sport (individual or group), the number of participations in the competitions, the motives for dealing with sports and the years spent in sports.

Qualitative processing of results
The athletes who took part in this research show a certain tendency to achieve the flow experience through a total score on the scale of 22, 54 (M = 22.54, SD = 3.42).Starting from the assumption that the theoretical range of results on a scale is from 0 to 30, the achieved result observed through the average value can indicate the inclination of athletes to experience the state of flow.We tested the results on the scale with a semi-structured interview.
During the interview, we tried to find out from the respondents whether they had experienced a state of flow.Since the flow is a state an individual is not aware of in the moment of experiencing, this experience can only be discussed when it is over and when we look at it from a certain time distance.Therefore, during the interview, we tried to find out how individuals describe this experience.Almost all of the interviewed athletes reported on the same feelings, thoughts, the conditions through which they passed and which they experienced during the flow.Furthermore, the flow is characterized by the state of focus and concentration.During the interview, most athletes reported on the visualization of winning, medals, goals scored as motivation factors to persevere in their efforts and achieve a sense of euphoria over the victory.Internal control locus and intrinsic motivation help when attaining a state of flow.
However, for the success achieved, besides the athlete, its environment and the support it has from others is significant.Table 1 gives a percentage view of social support, significance of others, which athletes evaluated in relation to their importance.During the interview, athletes reported that their success was the result of persistent and hard work, and that only genuine love for sports was a supporting factor and a condition for achieving a state of flow.Table 2 shows the factors of motivation for dealing with sports.

Perfectionism and the flow experience
We used descriptive statistics and correlation to examine the relationship between perfectionism and the state of flow.The results were processed in the SPSS 18.0 statistic program.
Table 3 shows the descriptive values of the results obtained on Perfectionism scale's subscales.According to our results, the total values of all subscales are increased relative to the standard values.The results of our research have shown that in almost all subscales of the MPS-F scale, our respondents have increased scores in relation to the arithmetic mean obtained by validating the scale.
On the scale Concerns for errors where concern due to errors is defined as negative reactions to errors, the tendency to interpret the error as equal to failures, and the tendency to believe that a person will lose respect of others after the failure, respondents have achieved a high score.Since the interpretation of the failure is equal to failure, athletes obviously have difficulty to accept the failure and mistakes they make.
On the subscale Parental expectations athletes also showed significantly higher scores than on the standard test results.A tendency towards the belief that parents of individuals set high goals and that they are overly critical comprise the dimension of Parental Expectations or Parental Objections.The literature often states that three elements are responsible for the success of an athlete: the abilities of the athlete, parents and the coach (Barjaktarević, 2008) but the personal capacity of an individual, investing in physical and tactical preparation, as well as developing motivation for achieving are also additional elements of success.According to the results of our research, a qualitative analysis showed that most athletes indicated that their parents and coach were their biggest support.However, we are often the witnesses of the indirect role of parents, namely, their overwhelming desire for success, possible dreams that did not come true or that they still have, lack of cooperation with the coach and, most importantly, the constant expectations for the best results from the athlete, they create pressure with the athlete (Rice, Ashby, Preusser; 1996).In the process of growing an athlete, the need for parents to be with him and to understand him is one of the basic needs that provides the child with security and stability, where every decision of the child is created in cooperation with parents who are sufficiently involved in the situation.The involvement of parents in the training process is a crucial component that reduces the discrepancy between athletes, parents and coach, which reduces objections, and therefore expectations (Barjaktarević, 2008) One of the most sensitive subscales for testing perfectionism is the subscale Personal Standards.According to Greblo (Greblo, 2012), advocating the idea that a multi-dimensional approach to the study of perfectionism is necessary (Hewitt et al 2003) he refers to early theorists who reported on the importance of the interpersonal aspect of perfectionism (Hamachek, 1978), and emphasizes that self-evaluation of perfectionists, above all, depends on the perception of the level of acceptance by significant others, and not exclusively about (un)achievement of high standards of achievement.In addition to this, perfectionists often require others to achieve high goals, which can also determine the characteristics of their psychosocial adaptation (Habke, Flynn, 2002).Generally speaking, athletes with high personal standards tend to re-evaluate the goals achieved they often declare as insufficient and easily achievable goals, which increases the risk of developing various difficulties.
However, what is particularly relevant to our sample is that there is no doubt in personal ability.Dimension Suspicion in personal performances is described as a feeling of insecurity in personal actions or thinking, as well as a tendency to feel that tasks are not satisfactorily completed.Obviously, engaging in sports activities contributes to self-confidence (Barjaktavević, 2008).
The correlation between perfectionism and the state of flow was also examined.The results are shown in Table 4. Generally, the results indicate a very weak linkage of the flow experience with perfectionism.When it comes to certain subscales, statistically significant correlations are missing.Statistically significant, but low, negative correlation of the Flow experience with the Concern about errors subscale was obtained.The flow experience implies a certain spontaneity, seizing the moment (to which the etymological significance of the word implies as well) (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002), while Concern about errors implies a desire for perfection filled with fear of possible mistakes, which leaves no space to any kind of relaxation.The flow experience is in a positive statistically significant connection with Organization.The correlation obtained is low, but it suggests that a certain measure of order, work and control over oneself and their own time is probably one of the correlates of a superior experience.
The flow experience of the athlete can act motivating and therefore needs to be nurtured and encouraged.It would be important to suggest coaches and sports workers that the excitement of the flow experience through frequent praise, patience, meeting the needs of athletes, is important for the formation of intricative motivation.Intricative motivation has long-term effects on the formation of an athlete's personality, and spontaneously on the success of the athlete himself as well.

CONCLUSION
Although there is a tendency to observe perfectionism as an aggravating factor for athletes, we must accept that the inclination to perfectionism has good sides, especially if we take into account its adaptive forms.The possibility to develop adaptive perfectionism is characteristic for athletes who strive for perfection, but only for personal reasons and intrinsic motives.Our sample showed that the true motive that drives them in sports is true love for sports.However, it is obvious that we must consider the pressure of parents and significant others as a significant factor.Striving for infallibility contributes to achieving top results, but does not provide a supreme experiences that are invaluable prize and motivating factor by themselves.

Notes:
This work was created within the 179002 Project funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development Republic of Serbia.

Table 1 .
Support sources for athletes

Table 2 .
Factors that affect motivation expressed in percentages of motivation * (* Answers to the question: "I'm dealing with sports due to.." )

Table 3 .
Arithmetic mean of achieved results on sub-scales of Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale

Table 4 .
Correlation of the subscales of multi-dimensional perfectionism scale with a flow experience