Abstract

The main goal of this research was to study the prediction of psychological mediators (autonomy, competence and relationships with others) and self-determined motivation for the social motivation to do physical activity. The sample consisted of 800 subjects, aged between 18 and 77, at the public sports facilities of a large Spanish city. After descriptive, correlation, regression and gender variance analysis (ANOVA), the findings revealed that the psychological mediators positively correlated with the most self-determined motivation. For its part, social motivation positively correlated with perceived competence, relationship with others and intrinsic and introjected regulation. As for gender, men perceived greater satisfaction of basic psychological needs for competence and relationships with others, while women had higher selfdetermined motivation. In addition, satisfaction of the need for relationships with others and all the motivation regulators positively predicted the social motivation for activity. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of encouraging the emergence of self-determined motivation in order to satisfy the social motivation for activity.