ArticleReview of European studies2016
Does Love Influence Athletic Performance? The Perspectives of Olympic Athletes.
Article in Review of European studies, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- The interplay between sexual activity, athletic performance, and recovery in athletes: a narrative review.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- Prevalence and factors associated with physical activity in adolescents from five secondary schools in northern Peru.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Sex differences in romantic love: an evolutionary perspective.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- How expressive ties energize competitive performance in DanceSport dyads: unraveling the role of athlete engagement in an innovatively applied actor-partner interdependence mediation model.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Controlling Behavior, Sex Bias and Coaching Success in Japanese Track and Field.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Romantic Love and Sleep Variations: Potential Proximate Mechanisms and Evolutionary Functions.Biology · 2021Review
- Ethnopharmacology of Love.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In this brief report, we provide an initial account of the association between love and athletic performance from the perspective of Olympic athletes. We posit that Romantic Passionate Love (RPL) and athletic performance may both involve the reward-motivation system of the brain. Based on this premise, we explored whether activation in one domain (love) might influence the other (sport). Our investigation was framed using Sternberg's triangular theory of love. Twenty Olympic athletes representing different sports were interviewed at the Games. Most athletes (n = 15) reported that their performance was better while in love; however, qualitative responses suggested that the benefits were correlated with rather than resulting from RPL. Although the athletes were provided with a definition of RPL and affirmed that their relationship met the criteria, interview responses reflected companionate rather than passionate love, suggesting that RPL may be differentially conceptualized across cultures. The study provides preliminary data that may be used to inform and refine future work on this topic.
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