Objectives: Studies on the psychological aspects of orthorexia nervosa are scarce. What has been studied to date is the correlation between orthorexia nervosa and self-esteem, perfectionism, and personality. The aim of this study is to verify whether patients suffering from orthorexia or those who have a tendency for orthorexia differ in terms of achievement motivation from a healthy control group.
Methods: The study was conducted in the group of 252 medical students. The study relied on the ORTO-15 questionnaire, Eating Attitudes Test-26, and Inventory of Achievement Motivation (Leistungsmotivationsinventar).
Results: Patients with a tendency for orthorexia showed higher results in terms of preference of challenging tasks, belief in success, motivation to learn, goal orientation, compensatory effort, care for prestige, achievement satisfaction, and general achievement motivation, as well as self-confidence and ambition.
Conclusions: Patients who suffer from orthorexia differ from those in the control group in terms of achievement motivation. In some respect, their results are parallel to those obtained from girls with anorexia readiness syndrome, which can lead to the conclusion that both orthorexia and anorexia belong to the spectrum of eating disorders.
Keywords: Achievement motivation; Orthorexia; Psychological factors.
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