The Comparison of Self-Compassion between Athletes with and without Exposed Exercise Addiction

The purpose of this study was to compare self-compassion in athletes with and without exposed exercise addiction. The research method was a descriptive and causal-comparative. The statistical population consisted of the sports team of University of Tehran. Initially, status of all students was assessed based on Exercise Addiction Scale (Griffiths et al.  2004), and 25 athletes with exposed (Score 24 or above) and 20 athlete without exposed exercise addiction (Grade 12 or lower) were identified according to guidelines of this scale .In addition, subjects were asked to complete Eating Disorders Scale (Stice et al. 2000) because of their high Comorbidity with exercise addiction. Then five athlete were excluded because of eating disorder symptoms. Finally, 20 athlete with exposed exercise addiction were selected and compared through Self-Compassion Scale (Rice et al.  2011). One way ANOVA results reveled that mean scores of self-compassion characteristic of the students with exposed are significantly lower than students without exposed exercise addiction . The findings of this study indicated the need to consider self-compassion characteristic as a risk factors of exercise addiction phenomenon, and they have many applications in the field of preventive and therapeutic interventions of use behaviors.