Hypersexuality in Kayakers: Roles of Sport, Gender, and Perceived Stress

Abstract

Sports participation is associated with heightened sexual behavior, while its determinants are unclear. We examined hypersexuality in 104 kayakers and 77 mixed exercisers, considering the roles of gender, exercise volume, and perceived stress. Participants, 89 men and 92 women (M_age = 26.1 ± 8.1 years) completed the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, and demographic questions online. Path analyses tested the relationships between perceived stress and exercise volume, considering gender and sports form-related differences. Women reported more stress than men (p < .001, Cohen’s d = .70). Men reported higher hypersexuality than women (p < .001, d = .96). Kayakers reported higher training volumes (p < .001, d = .97) and hypersexuality than mixed exercisers (p = .003, d = .46). Perceived stress was positively and moderately associated with hypersexuality, while exercise volume was positively but weakly related to hypersexuality only among men. Exercise volume was unrelated to hypersexuality in kayakers, while a positive, moderate association emerged in mixed exercisers. These results suggest that hypersexuality and its associations with perceived stress and exercise volume could vary based on the sports’ form and the gender of the athlete. While the perceived stress may relate to hypersexuality in both men and women, the relationship between exercise volume and hypersexuality may vary more according to gender and the sport’s form.

Author contributions

XX: writing, designing the study, and statistical analyses; XY: writing, literature review, and statistical analyses; YY: data collection, reduction, and verification YZ: statistics, data verification, and proofing; ZZ: study design, subject recruitment, and writing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Code availability statement

Not applicable.

Data availability statement

Data are available upon request from the authors.

Notes

1 As the present study was conducted before the ICD-11-based Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) diagnosis came into effect on January 2023, and the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory was used to assess this phenomenon, we use the term “hypersexuality” in this article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no funding for this research.