When Standards Protect and Pressure Undermines: A Bayesian and Person-Centred Analysis of Perfectionism, Self-Handicapping, Motivation, and Academic Well-Being in Gifted Adolescents

Perfectionism is common among gifted students, but how its dimensions relate to academic well-being remains unclear. In this cross-sectional, single-site study, 234 adolescents attending Science and Art Centres in Turkiye (aged 14 to 18; 122 girls, 112 boys) completed measures of perfectionistic standards and discrepancy, academic self-handicapping, academic motivation, subjective academic well-being, and parental achievement pressure. Since academic motivation and subjective academic well-being were not empirically separable in this sample (latent r = 0.96), the two were modelled as a single academic well-being construct, and the originally planned serial model was replaced by a simple indirect model. Discrepancy was not associated with self-handicapping or with academic well-being, and a Bayesian region-of-practical-equivalence analysis placed 99.9% of the posterior for its indirect association within a negligible-effect region. Higher perfectionistic standards were associated with less self-handicapping and, through it, with higher academic well-being; parental achievement pressure showed the reverse pattern. Both indirect associations were statistically reliable but small, and most of their posterior mass also fell within the negligible region. No evidence of moderation by parental pressure was found. Latent profile analysis supported a two-profile solution differing only in standards. Because the data are cross-sectional and single-site, all findings are reported as concurrent associations rather than as processes.