the relationship between personality traits and exercise behaviors:self-determination theory

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relation between personality traits and self-determination of exercise behavior. The sample consisted of 450 (236 females, 214 males) students between the ages of 18 and 49 years (M=23.37, SD=4.80) from eighth area of Islamic Azad University. The sample was selected through cluster random sampling. The participants completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Sport Motivation Scale (Pelletier et al, 1995).The results indicated that sport motivation components were explained by personality traits. Among personality traits, openness to experience had direct relations with all sport motivation subscales. There was no significant relation between extraversion and amotivation, and between conscientiousness and intrinsic motivation to accomplish. Also, neuroticism had negative relations with identified and introjected components, and positively correlated with amotivation.