Passion types and subjective well-being for French older adult runners

Abstract

Passion has been involved in psychological processes that emerge in diverse human activities such as physical activity and sports, work, leisure, and interpersonal relationships. As a leisure time activity, few studies have explored the relationships between passion types and subjective well-being for physically active older adults. Two studies were conducted with 1,277 adult runners (642 men; 612 women); age: M = 60.79, SD = 5.32. Study 1 (n = 567; n = 163) aimed to test the psychometric properties of the adapted passion scale. Study 2 (n = 556) aimed (a) to test the mediation of subjective vitality in the relationships among harmonious passion (HP), obsessive passion (OP), and life satisfaction and (b) to test the effect of selected variables on HP and OP. The adapted passion scale had good factorial structure, convergent validity, internal consistency, and temporal stability. It was proved that HP was a positive predictor of vitality, which was a direct positive predictor of life satisfaction, whereas OP was not a significant predictor for vitality and a direct negative predictor of life satisfaction. Vitality was a partial mediator between passion types and life satisfaction. Thus, the adapted passion scale proved to have good psychometric properties and the findings were identical to those of Vallerand and his colleagues.