Abstract
This study aimed at examining the differences in exercise dependence and social appearance anxiety among exercise participants, and determine the relationship between exercise dependence symptoms with social appearance anxiety. The study research group consisted of 246 (Mean age: 26,94 years) exercise participants, 79 women and 167 men. Each of the participants filled “Exercise Dependence Scale-21” and “Social Appearance Anxiety Scale”. After testing the assumptions of parametric tests, t-test, MANOVA, ANOVA and Pearson correlation analysis were used to analyze the data. The MANOVA results revealed a significant main effect for gender on exercise dependence, and univariate analysis showed significant differences in the subscales “Time and Exercise Preference”, “Lack of Control”, and “Tolerance” subscales of “Exercise Dependence Scale-21” (p<0.05). According to the variable of frequency of participation in exercise, there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the groups in all sub-dimensions of exercise addiction, except for the "Continuance" subscale (p<0.05). T-test analyses indicated that there were mean differences in the social appearance anxiety scores between the individuals who prefer to participate the exercise single or not (p<0.05). Furthermore, there were positive and significant correlation between social appearance anxiety and “Time and Exercise Preference” and “Continuance” subscales of “Exercise Dependence Scale-21”. As a result, it can be concluded that frequently exercise participants were more likely to exhibit exercise dependency than less frequently participants but did not exhibit more social appearance anxiety