Modeling the Relationship Between Academic Perfectionism, Fear of Failure, and Psychological Burnout Among Students: The Mediating Role of Self-Criticism

Abstract

This study aimed to qualitatively explain the relationship between academic perfectionism, fear of failure, and psychological burnout among students, with particular emphasis on the mediating role of self-criticism. This qualitative study was conducted using thematic analysis. The participants included 22 upper-secondary school students from Tehran who were selected through purposive sampling based on their lived experiences of academic pressure, fear of failure, psychological exhaustion, and perfectionistic tendencies. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and sampling continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. After obtaining informed consent, interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using NVivo software. The analysis involved initial coding, categorization of codes, development of subthemes, and extraction of main categories. To enhance trustworthiness, member checking, peer review, analytic memo writing, and constant comparison were applied throughout the research process. Data analysis led to the identification of five main categories: “inflexible academic standards and conditional self-worth,” “fear of failure and its psychosocial consequences,” “self-criticism as a mediating mechanism,” “psychological burnout and motivational disengagement,” and “family, school, and comparison-based intensifying contexts.” The findings indicated that academic perfectionism contributes to psychological burnout when students interpret failure or lower-than-expected performance as evidence of personal inadequacy. In this process, self-criticism operates as a mediating mechanism by transforming perfectionistic pressure into emotional exhaustion, academic avoidance, motivational decline, and feelings of burnout through harsh internal dialogue, rumination over mistakes, inability to accept relative performance, and generalization of academic failure to personal identity. The results suggest that the relationship between academic perfectionism and psychological burnout is not simple or linear; rather, it is intensified through fear of failure and self-criticism. Therefore, school-based interventions should focus not only on reducing academic pressure but also on decreasing self-critical thinking, promoting self-compassion, modifying unrealistic standards of success, and creating psychologically safe educational environments in which students can experience mistakes without threat to their self-worth.