An Examination of Perfectionism and its Relationships With the Gambler’s Fallacy, Small World Propensity, Sleep Deprivation and the P300 Waveform

Abstract

Perfectionism has historically been linked to superior performance, but in reality, it is also often associated with multiple negative outcomes. Research on how perfectionistic facets relate to performance monitoring and brain function under sleep deprivation has been limited. Cognitive biases have been shown to be exacerbated when experiencing a sleep-deprived state. One such bias is the Gambler’s Fallacy, a cognitive bias where people believe that previous outcomes will have an effect on future independent events (the odds of an event occurring). Two self- report measures of perfectionism, self-oriented perfectionism (SOP) and socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP), were investigated through two electrophysiological measures (P300 and Small World Propensity) collected from 15 participants (10 females, 5 males, Mage = 22 years, age range: 18-44 years) during a gambling task in both alert and sleepy conditions. The P300 component is a positive deflection event-related potential component thought to represent an aspect of performance monitoring, the attention or evaluation allocated to a stimulus. No significant correlations were observed between either type of perfectionism and the P300 amplitudes in either the alert or sleepy state; however, P300 amplitudes were reduced in the sleepy condition overall. No other interactions or main effects were observed for P300 amplitudes. If a person were susceptible to the Gambler’s Fallacy, then the P300 amplitude should increase with each consecutive win or loss because these increasingly unexpected events should result in increased performance monitoring (attention/evaluation). The measure of susceptibility to the Gambler’s Fallacy was taken as the magnitude of the residual when the second consecutive win or loss was regressed from the fourth consecutive win or loss. Multiple regressions revealed a diminished susceptibility to the Gambler’s Fallacy for those higher in SOP measures but only in the sleepy condition. The results indicate that those higher in SOP were associated with lower P300 residual amplitudes, which may indicate reduced susceptibility to the Gambler's Fallacy when sleep deprived. The Small World Propensity (SWP) model is a measure of the connectivity of the brain. There were also no significant differences in the SWP model between alert and sleepy states nor with respect to the two facets of perfectionism. Future research should consider using alternate paradigms that do not involve gambling to improve the generalizability of the findings.