Personal standards perfectionism (PSP) denotes the disposition to strive for flawlessness and excessively evaluate oneself based on the achievement of extremely high performance goals. Neuropsychological studies have linked PSP to indicators of error processing, e.g. increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and an increased error negativity peak amplitude in the event-related potential. These links suggest that individuals high in PSP process errors more deeply than individuals low in PSP. When making an error in an experimental task, high-PS perfectionists should thus be able to draw on the information the error provides to avoid future errors and improve their performance (optimisation hypothesis of PSP). However, the empirical evidence for this hypothesis is mixed. We suggest that many of the previous studies investigating the optimisation hypothesis employed experimental paradigms in which errors did not provide the opportunity to improve subsequent behaviour. Hence, even enhanced error processing would not allow to optimise one’s performance. To test this suggestion, we developed an experimental paradigm in which an error on trial n allows to draw information on what will be the correct response on trial n + 1. If individuals high in PSP were to process errors more intensely to optimise their behaviour, they should show increased post-response adjustment in terms of post-error slowing and post-error accuracy compared to individuals low in PSP. Our study will be the first study to test the optimisation hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that has been developed specifically for this purpose.