Perfect Riders: Personality, Perfectionism, and Mental Health in Norwegian Competition Riders.

The research article investigates the connection between personality traits, perfectionism, and mental health amongst competition riders in Norway. The study discovered that riders with high conscientiousness and low neuroticism had more prominent mental health, and self-oriented perfectionism played a beneficial role.

Study Methodology

• In the exploration of the relationship between personality traits, perfectionism, and mental health among riders, the study used an online questionnaire as a means of collecting data.
• The target population of the survey was competition riders holding licenses, with 662 of such riders from Norway participating in the study.

Key Findings

• The study’s analysis concluded that riders with high scores in conscientiousness and low scores in neuroticism displayed better mental health in comparison to other surveyed riders.
• Notably, the research found that self-oriented perfectionism positively influenced the riders’ mental health. This type of perfectionism proved to be a significant predicting factor of mental health and partly mediated the relationship between personality traits and mental health.
• Contrastingly, socially prescribed perfectionism, where individuals perceive that significant others have unrealistic expectations of them, showed no correlation with mental health.

Implications

• A striking implication of the research is that self-oriented perfectionism — where individuals impose high standards on themselves — may have a positive effect on a competition rider’s mental health.
• In this context, the research suggests that a rider’s heightened degree of conscientiousness could be associated with this self-oriented perfectionism, resulting in positive outcomes.
• This information could prove invaluable to mental health professionals and coaches seeking to develop strategies to promote healthy competition behaviours and potentially improve an individual rider’s mental well-being.