Narcissism and Exercise Addiction: The Mediating Roles of Exercise-Related Motives.

Virgil Zeigler-Hill,Avi Besser,Gracynn Young,Maor Gabay

doi:10.3390/ijerph18084243

Abstract

The present research examined whether the associations that narcissistic personality features had with exercise addiction were mediated by particular motives for engaging in exercise in a large Israeli community sample (N = 2629). The results revealed that each aspect of narcissism was positively associated with exercise addiction. Narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry had similar positive indirect associations with exercise addiction through the interpersonal motive for exercise. However, these aspects of narcissism diverged in their indirect associations with exercise addiction through psychological motives, body-related motives, and fitness motives for exercise such that these indirect associations were positive for narcissistic admiration but negative for narcissistic rivalry. Narcissistic vulnerability had positive indirect associations with exercise addiction through body-related motives and fitness motives that were similar to those observed for narcissistic admiration. These results suggest that exercise-related motives may play important roles in the associations that narcissistic personality features have with exercise addiction. The discussion will focus on the implications of these results for understanding the complex connections between narcissism and exercise addiction.

Highlights

Exercise refers to planned, structured, and repetitive physical activities that are intended to improve or maintain some aspect of physical fitness [1,2,3]
One possible explanation for this pattern is that the zero-order correlation that narcissistic vulnerability had with exercise addiction may have been due to the common “core” of narcissism that is shared with narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry rather than being specific to this aspect of narcissism
Narcissistic vulnerability had positive indirect associations with exercise addiction through body-related motives and fitness motives that were similar to those observed for narcissistic admiration

Summary

Introduction

Exercise refers to planned, structured, and repetitive physical activities that are intended to improve or maintain some aspect of physical fitness [1,2,3]. Some individuals may become so focused on exercise that it can have negative consequences for them due to issues such as prioritizing exercise to the extent that other areas of life are neglected [7,8,9,10,11,12]. This has led to concerns that exercise may constitute an addiction for some individuals [13,14,15,16,17]. Exercise addiction differs from being highly committed to exercise in various ways including that individuals who are committed to exercising

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Conclusion