Investigating the Relationship between Fan Motivations and Alexithymic Personality in Iranian Football Premier League Fans

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between fan motivations and Alexithymic personality in Iranian Premier League fans. The statistical population includes the fans of Khorasan Shahre Khodro Club who have cheered on the team in the 28th week game of the National Football Premier League against Saipa. Two standard questionnaires were used to collect data. In order to confirm the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha test and to confirm the validity of sports psychologists were used. The results show that the mean score of fan motivation and all its components indicate unfavorable and the mean score of Alexithymia and all its components indicate favorable status. It was also found that there is a significant priority among the components of fan motivation, the most important priority is "opportunism" and the components of "interaction with others", "supporter" and "aestheticism" are in the second to fourth priorities and also there is a significant priority among the components of Alexithymia, the most important priority is "difficulty in recognizing feelings", and the components of "having external thinking", "difficulty in expressing feelings" are in the second and third priorities. Also, it was found that there is a positive and significant relationship between fan motivations and components of supporter and opportunism with Alexithymia (P<0.05) and there is no significant relationship between the aesthetics and interaction with others with Alexithymia. Finally, research model was confirmed. The results indicate that fan motivations for the presence of them in stadiums can affect their Alexithymic behavior.