Chronic nail biting looks like nerves. What perfectionism means hereThis isn’t the trophy-cabinet version of the trait, the tidy CV and the high standards. Forty-seven participants is a small room, and the sample mixed nail biters in with skin pickers and hair pullers, without isolating nail biting on its own. One reported prevalence of OCD among nail biters, 3.1 per cent, sits close to the lifetime rate in the general population anyway. Whether that broader tendency traces back to pacing, temperament, or something else again, it argues against nail biting standing alone as a single isolated tic.