Role of passion in predicting the flow, sport motivation and goal orientation in athletes

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of passion in predicting the flow, sport motivation and goal orientation in athletes. The secondary purpose of this study was to examine the athletes' passion levels with regard to different demographic variables. One hundred and eighty nine female (Mage: 25.26 ± 5.16) and two hundred and one male (Mage: 24.97 ± 4.8), totally 390 athletes (Mage: 25.11 ± 4.97) voluntarily participated in this study. ?Passion Scale (Vallerand, Mageau, Leonard, Blanchard, Koestner, Gagne & Marsolais, 2003)?, ?Dispositional Flow State Scale-2 (Jackson & Eklund, 2004)?, ?Sport Motivation Scale (Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, Tuson, Briere & Blais ,1995)?, ?Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda & Whitehead, 1998)? and ? Personal Information Questionnaire? that is developed by the researcher were administered to participants. Analysis revealed that obsessive passion and harmonious passion are significant predictors of athletes? flow states ( R2=0.04; p<0.05). There was a positive relationship between flow state and harmonious passion ( ß= 0.25; p<0.05) and negative relationship between flow state and obsessive passion (ß= -0.17; p<0.05). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are positively correlated with both obsessive passion ( ß=0.32; p<0.01; ß=0.43; p<0.01) and harmonious passion ( ß=0.15; p<0.05; ß=0.18; p<0.01). On the other hand, a negative correlation was found between amotivation and obsessive passion (ß= -0.29; p<0.01), but a positive relationship was found between the amotivation and harmonious passion ( ß= 0.42; p<0.01). No significant relationship was obtained between harmonious passion and goal orientations. However, obsessive passion positively associated with both task orientation ( ß= 0.40; p<0.01) and ego orientation ( ß= 0.47; p<0.01). Results also indicated no significant differences in passion [both harmonious (t(388) = -0.84; p > .05) and obsessive (t(388)= -0.73; p > .05)] between male and female athletes. In terms of sport experience, athletes who have 0-10 years sport experiences had higher harmonious passion (t (388)=4.29; p< .01) and obsessive passion (t (388)=7.36; p < .01) levels than athletes who have over 11 year sport experiences. As a result; passion plays a significant role in predicting the flow experiences of athletes, their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their ego orientations. In addition, less experienced athletes have higher passion toward sport activity than more experienced athletes.