Passion, Perfectionism and Sports Commitment as Covariates of the Risk of Exercise Addiction

Exercise addiction is a behavioral addictions without diagnostic criteria due to incomparable antecedents, and research based on risk rather than dysfunctionality. The risk of exercise addiction (REA) shares substantial variance with passion, perfectionism, and commitment to sport. However, their contributionb to REA is unknown. Thus, this study researched this issue by consideriung gender, competition status, and individual vs. team sports. An international sample of 1,003 regular exercisers (46.86% males) completed instruments to assess REA, passion, perfectionism and sports commitment. All measures showed medium to strong correlations with the REA. A bootstrapped hierarchical regression yielded six statistically significant predictors (exercise volume and intensity, harmonious and obsessive passion, rigid perfectionism, and constrained commitment), sharing 42.7% of the variance with the REA. Three bootstrapped univariate tests yielded gender, competition status, and sports-form differences in REA when the predictors were not included in the model as covariates. However, all group differences vanished when the predictors were controlled-