
Attila SzaboELTE Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Hungary
Attila Szabo
PhD, DSc
About
321
Publications
316,331
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8,582
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Introduction
I completed my undergraduate and first postgraduate degree at Concordia University (BSc in Psycholoy and MSc in Biology) in Montreal, Canada. Then, I obtained my PhD in Sciences of Physical Activity from the University of Montreal. Later I taught at Nottingham Trent University in England, first as Senior Lecturer and later as Reader (Associate Professor) for nearly 9 years while also completing an MA in Education. In 2005, I moved to Budapest. Currently I am Professor of Psychology at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University. In 2017, I was conferred the degree of Doctor of Sciences (DSc) by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
My current research interests are in the areas of behavioral (exercise and Internet) addiction, impact of exercise on mental health, and placebo effects in human behavior.
Additional affiliations
March 2009 - September 2016
January 1997 - June 2005
April 1995 - April 1996
Hungarian University of Physical Education
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Introduced Internet Research in Social Sciences and Sport-Exercise Sciences
Education
April 2015 - March 2017
September 1998 - May 2000
January 1990 - May 1993
Publications
Publications (321)
The objective of this first literature review, in this area, is to unveil the current status of knowledge on superstition in sport. Its outcome reveals that superstitious behaviors vary with the type of sport, athletic level, as well as athletic role. In agreement with past theories, they increase with the level of challenge, as reflected by the im...
The goal of the study was to validate the English version of the Smartphone Application-Based Addiction Scale (SABAS; Csibi et al. 2016), which is a short and easy-to-use tool for screening the risk of smartphone application-based addiction. Another aim was to identify the most frequently used smartphone applications and their perceived importance...
Sexual violence against children in sports receives little
research attention. The aim of this Preferred Reporting Items
for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses-based systematic
literature review was to synthesize the up-to-date knowledge
and identify the already known and the still unknown information
in this area. The literature search yielded s...
Exercise addiction is an extensively studied topic in the sport science and psychology literature as reflected by the more than 1000 papers published in the field. However, only about 12 cases were published in the area, which may suggest that there is difficulty in reaching and studying affected individuals. Relying on the Components Model of Addi...
Placebo effects in sports imply favorable performance outcomes generated by one's cognition. Placebo use is a form of non-detectible doping for placebo responders. They can be delivered openly or by deceiving the athlete. The current analytical review discusses placebo effects and looks at them in sports and exercise settings. It expands the critic...
Citation: Somogyi, A.; Uca, M.; Bulgay, C.; Acheampong, E.Y.; de la Vega, R.; Ruíz-Barquín, R.; Szabo, A. Positive and Negative Expectations Associated with Coffee and Energy Drinks: Implications for Placebo-Nocebo Research in Sports. Nutrients 2025, 17, 628. https://doi. Abstract: Background: Nutritional expectations have been shown to influence e...
Background: Exercise addiction, marked by an inability to control exercise and associated with distress that clinically impairs daily activities, is a significant but underrecognized issue in physical activity and health. While its physiological, psychological, and behavioral aspects have been studied, the genetic basis of exercise addiction remain...
Background: Increasingly, young people are exposed to or exhibit socially toxic negative behaviours illustrating a need to influence behaviour positively by developing personal and social responsibility. University students studying sports-related courses are the teachers or sports leaders of the future and, if motivated to do so, can strongly infl...
Background
Physical fitness and functioning are related to better mental health in older age. However, which fitness components (body composition, strength, flexibility, coordination, and endurance) are more closely related to psychological well-being (PWB) is unclear.
Methods
This research examined how body mass index (BMI) and six indices of fun...
Pornography is used worldwide, and 3% of individuals may experience problematic pornography use (PPU, i.e. poorly controlled use resulting in significant distress and negative consequences). Therefore, instruments gauging PPU are needed in nation-specific languages. This study aimed to validate a modified version of the Problematic Pornography Cons...
Background: The risk of exercise addiction is generally associated with high levels of stress and low self-esteem. Previous studies have revealed a significant association between stress, risk of exercise addiction, and self-esteem. However, the mediating effect of the latter was not examined. Aims: Based on the Interactional Model of Exercise Addi...
Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is an increasingly needed, life-maintaining kidney replacement therapy; efficient solute transport is critical for patient outcome. While the role of peritoneal perfusion on solute transport in PD has been described, the role of cellular barriers is uncertain, the mesothelium has been considered irrelevant. We calculated pe...
Given the ability to use the internet and applications that are both immediately accessible and highly rewarding to users, concern exists regarding the development of excessive and dysregulated smartphone use (also known as ‘smartphone addiction’). This chapter reviews the current state of research on dysregulated smartphone use, identifies gaps in...
The prevalence of falls in older individuals worldwide is around 26.5%. There is an urgent need to identify factors antagonistic to advanced age-related falls regarding personal safety, family or nursing care time, and healthcare costs. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between functional fitness, mental health indicators, and th...
A csapatsportokban a teljesítményt és az együttműködést helyezik előtérbe, szemben az egyéni sportokkal, melyekbenszubjektív célok és érzelmi állapotok dominálnak. Ennek alapján jelen in-situ tanulmányunkban azt feltételeztük,hogy a pozitív affektivitás magasabb az egyéni sportokban, míg a csapatsportokban ez kisebb mértékben, vagy egyáltalán nem l...
The 8-item Passion Scale (PS-8) is a unidimensional instrument used in dual versus single passion research. The PS-8 was validated in Icelandic, Persian, and Turkish student samples. In this study, we translated the PS-8 and validated it with physically active and inactive adults from Hungary. We also evaluated measurement invariance (across gender...
Background and aims: The Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI), based on the components model addictions, is a 6-item instrument used to assess the risk of exercise addiction (REA). Its revised version (EAI-R) was published in 2019 but only differed from the original scale in the response rating range (using a 6-point rather than 5-point Likert scale)...
Background: Feelings and emotions during sports and exercise determine commitment, adherence, and enjoyment of the activity. The Physical Activity Affect Scale (PAAS) combined two earlier instruments, the Exercise-Induced Feelings Inventory and the Subjective Exercise Experiences Scale, to investigate affective states generally characterizing post-...
The reemergence of primitive reflexes (PRs) in older age is related to cognitive impairment. Currently, there are no means to prevent or slow their reappearance, but research evidence exists for their control in children. Therefore, this experiment investigated whether a 16-week special sensorimotor exercise program could benefit older adults and w...
Motocross is one of the most popular high-speed motorcycle races, which takes place on a naturally closed track with significant challenges. This study aimed to characterize anthropometric, circulatory, and lower and upper limb muscle properties based on laboratory and race-recorded characteristics. Male competitors (n = 3) aged 14 years (MX) were...
Physical inactivity is a growing problem that contributes to a range of negative health consequences, such as psychological and physical issues and weight gain. Recent evidence suggests that the tendency to avoid physical activity is associated with weight stigma and low (body-related) self-esteem. New cross-culturally validated psychometric scales...
Changes in performance caused by positive and negative expectations (i.e., placebo and nocebo responses) were found to play an important role in many aspects of motor performance. This study aimed to test the impact of placebo/nocebo responses and the assumed moderating role of dispositional optimism and anxiety on proprioceptive accuracy, an essen...
Exercise addiction has been investigated for almost half a decade in well over 1000 published papers. Studies adopt different terminologies like exercise addiction, overexercise, exercise dependence, compulsive exercise, obligatory exercise, and the like to refer to the same concept while creating conceptual confusion and rendering cross-study comp...
While physical activity (PA) has numerous health benefits, in rare cases it can become addictive and lead to adverse health effects. Automatic reactions to addiction-related cues are a hallmark of addiction, however, their association with exercise dependence (ED) remains unknown. This research examined the links between ED and automatic reactions...
Many amateur and professional players start racing at an early age. The aim is to explore the characteristics of heart rate and speed patterns recorded during competition. We investigated the body composition and cardiorespiratory characteristics of three elite adolescent athletes, their heart rate, and speed patterns in the laboratory and competit...
Background
Around 800 million young children worldwide have cognitive-developmental limitations due to issues related to biological, environmental, and psychosocial factors. These problems lead to educational challenges, limited skill development, and higher unemployment rates. Therefore, timely interventions addressing the underlying problems in i...
Background
Hedonic smartphone use has been associated with dependence and addiction studied under the umbrella term Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU). Research usually explores total screen time as an index of PSU. A few studies suggest that exercise is inversely related to smartphone use time. However, it is unknown which primary characteristics of...
Sports performance could be affected by placebo and nocebo effects. The last literature review on placebo and nocebo effects on sports and exercise performance was published in 2019. In the past five years, several new studies have been published. This review aimed to update the previous synthesis and evaluate the results of new studies focusing on...
Background
Image and Performance-Enhancing Drugs (IPEDs) can enhance mental and physical capabilities and impact one’s overall health. Initially confined in sport environments, IPEDs use has become increasingly widespread in a high-performing society. The present study was aimed at profiling IPEDs use during the COVID-19 lockdown among an internati...
Exercise addiction is widely studied, but an official clinical diagnosis does not exist for this behavioral addiction. Earlier research using various screening instruments examined the absolute scale values while investigating the disorder. The Exercise Addiction Inventory-3 (EAI-3) was recently developed with two subscales, one denoting health-rel...
While regular exercise should be part of the contemporary lifestyle, many people overindulge in it to the point of losing control over their behavior. This condition is known as exercise addiction (EA). Although addiction is an individual phenomenon, and most of the over 1,000 published studies on EA look at individual exercisers, there are studies...
Objectives
Recently, the widespread surge in smartphone addiction (SA) has raised major global health concerns and prompted researchers to scrutinize the inverse relationship between physical activity (PA) and the risk of SA. This systematic literature review aims to synthesize the empirical research on the relationship between PA and SA among univ...
Generally, in interactive sports, one focuses on performance-related field events, cooperation, and coordination rather than subjective feelings. Therefore, we hypothesized that subjectively perceived positive affect would rise immediately after co-active but not interactive exercise training. We used the Exercise-Induced Feeling Inventory (EFI) to...
Empirical research with adults reveals that performance‐enhancing placebo effects emerge in sports and exercise. However, there is no research on children. Coaches' messages to them could have positive, performance‐improving (placebo) or negative, performance‐impairing (nocebo) effects. This experiment examined the former by ascribing fictive perfo...
Motocross racing is a seldom-researched popular extreme sport. This field research aimed to investigate feeling states, perceived arousal, anxiety, and negative and positive affect in the anticipatory and recovery race periods and their relationship to expected and perceived performance. Twenty Motocross racers completed psychometric scales before...
29 Sports participation is associated with heightened sexual behavior, while its determinants are 30 unclear. We examined hypersexuality in 104 kayakers and 77 mixed exercisers, considering the 31 roles of gender, exercise volume, and perceived stress. Participants, 89 men and 92 women 32 (Mage=26.1±8.1 years), completed the Hypersexual Behavior In...
Functional fitness is essential in older adults. This study assessed the physical and mental effects of a 16-week exercise intervention based on the Fullerton Functional Fitness Test (FFFT) in adults over 60. Thirty-eight participants (66% women), Mage = 80.15, SD = 7.21, were randomized into exercise (n = 24) and waiting list control (n = 14) grou...
Positive life changes may be associated with spiritual/religious sources. This pilot study tested religiousness/spirituality in adults (N = 77; 21% men; Mage = 39.45, SD = 11.97 years) who answered demographic questions and completed the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality. Respondents who reported a major life-changing spi...
Older adults face numerous unfavorable functional changes caused by aging, but many exhibit resilience , which helps them cope with challenges. Physical activity is positively associated with resilience. Therefore, this systematic literature review aimed to uncover the relationships between physical activity and resilience in older adults. We have...
Most studies on acute stress stem from works conducted under artificial laboratory conditions. Inducing stress for experimental scrutiny is problematic and can be unethical. In this study, a 'research methods' course's curriculum included a demonstration study testing anxiety and heart rate responses to the midterm test. Fifty-four university stude...
Background: The Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI) is a valid and reliable instrument and has been used in numerous contexts and research studies. The EAI was recently revised (EAI-R), but the psychometric properties of the EAI-R have yet to be examined in an Italian context. Therefore, the present study aimed to validate the EAI-R among Italian-sp...
Background and aims: Aquatic exercises are popular leisure activities worldwide, primarily among women. These activities are especially beneficial for aging people and individuals having difficulties performing land-based exercises. Their physical health benefits have already been documented in the academic literature, but research on their mental...
Physical fitness and functioning are related to better mental health in older age. However, which fitness components (body composition, strength, flexibility, coordination, and endurance) are more closely related to psychological well-being (PWB) is unclear. This research examined how body mass index (BMI) and six indices of functional fitness (i.e...
Exercise addiction (EA) refers to excessive exercise, lack of control, and health risks. The Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI) is one of the most widely used tools in its assessment. However, the cross-cultural psychometric properties of the EAI could be improved because it misses three pathological patterns, including guilt, exercise despite inju...
Released less than fve months ago, ChatGPT became the center of attention of scholars worldwide. This artifcial intelligence (AI) language model has over 100 million subscribers worldwide, generating many discussions concerning its accuracy, advantages, and threats to science and education. Its accuracy in law, linguistics, mathematics, and medicin...
Released less than five months ago, ChatGPT became the center of attention of scholars worldwide. This artificial intelligence (AI) language model has over 100 million subscribers worldwide, generating many discussions concerning its accuracy, advantages, and threats to science and education. Its accuracy in law, linguistics, mathematics, and medic...
Smartphones are a medium for performing online activities, and one such activity could be the compulsive online health information search — cyberchondria. This study aimed to test whether cyberchondria and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) positively predict smartphone addiction (SA), adjusted for age, gender, daily use duration, the reason for using...
Placebo and nocebo effects could influence the perceived, actual, or both postural stabilities. Therefore, this experiment examined whether postural stability is susceptible to placebo and nocebo effects. Driven by expectations, these cognitions could influence the motor stability of people in physical rehabilitation and those with motion instabili...
Exercise addiction is a term used to describe dysfunctional exercise behavior characterized by the classic symptoms of addictions, which eventually result in physical, psychological, or social harm to the affected individual. While well over 1000 peer-reviewed papers on problematic exercise have been published, very few studies have explored the co...
The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Serbian Smartphone Application-Based Addiction Scale (SABAS) and the original English version of the same scale administered to a Serbian-speaking sample. In Study 1, 599 participants completed Serbian SABAS, with 189 having both test and retest data. Results suggested good internal con...
Released less than three months ago, ChatGPT became the center of attention of scholars around the world. This artificial intelligence (AI) language model has over 100 million subscribers worldwide and generates many discussions concerning its accuracy, advantages, and threats to science and education. Its accuracy in law, linguistics, mathematics,...
The COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, claiming nearly seven million lives by now. Despite a decline in the mortality rate, in November 2022, the virus-linked death cases still exceeded 500 every day. There is a belief that it is over now, but similar health-crisis situations may re-occur, and therefore it is essential to learn from such human...
This narrative overview summarises the work on exercise addiction (EA) over the past 12 years and exposes critical conceptual and methodological issues. More than 1000 articles exist on EA, conceptualised as uncontrolled training harming the individual. Still, EA has no clinical diagnosis criteria at this time. Research is increasing continuously,...
The present study tested the psychometric properties of the Chinese Revised Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI-R). In Study 1, 800 non-sport and 357 sports science students completed the Chinese EAI-R, the Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS), the Compulsive Exercise Test (CET), and the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI). They also reported their weekly exe...
Background
Although numerous studies have examined associations between personality traits and eating disorders in females, few studies have been conducted on female exercisers. Given the high risk of disordered eating in female exercisers, this study investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and disordered eating in fem...
Background: Although numerous studies examined associations between personality traits and eating disorders in females, few studies have been conducted on female exercisers. Given the high risk of disordered eating in female exercisers, this study investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and disordered eating in female...
1) Background: The common factors which potentially contribute to the development of eating disorders and exercise dependence during early adulthood are still relatively unclear. The present study aimed to examine the role of BMI, body image inflexibility, and generalized anxiety in these two behavioral problems in a sample of college students. 2)...
This chapter examines compulsive and obsessive exercise behavior from the perspective of behavioral addictions. First, the theoretical interpretation of the dysfunction is presented considering psychological and biological models for the etiology of the morbidity. Next, the research on biological aspects of exercise addiction is presented briefly,...
This study was performed to investigate further the two-dimensional aspect of passion and its relationship to the risk of exercise addiction (REA) in nine nations and to clarify the unresolved gender differences. The here reported results stem from the reanalysis of data gathered in three previous empirical studies. The analyses demonstrated that h...
Different aspects of motor performance were shown to be malleable to placebo and nocebo influences. However, there are equivocal findings too, and in some cases, only perceived but not actual performance was impacted. Therefore, the present laboratory investigation aimed to study if postural stability is susceptible to placebo and nocebo effects. D...
Yoga is a popular leisure activity and health practice worldwide, especially among women. It could become a long-term lifestyle involving passion, but, like other exercises, it may become addictive. While exercise addiction is widely studied, addiction to yoga remains unexplored. In this cross-sectional study, we examined 215 highly experienced wom...
This cross-sectional study aimed to explore specific online behaviours and their association with a range of underlying psychological and other behavioural factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight countries (Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Portugal, Japan, Hungary, and Brazil) participated in an international investigation involving...
This retrospective study was a nonrandomized comparison of exercisers’ (runners and participants of a spinning class) states of consciousness with subjects of active-alert hypnosis (AAH) and students in a class (control). Three hundred and seventy-five participants completed the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI). Runners, spinners, and...
This note is a reply to Brevers et al.’s (2022) the commentary. We first explain that the commentary's title is in discord with the theoretical implications of the Expanded Interactional Model of Exercise Addiction (EIMEA; Dinardi et al., 2021). Subsequently, we argue that in contrast to Brevers et al.’s arguments, exercise volume or intensive phys...
Swimming is one of the world’s most
popular recreational exercises and sports.
Scholastic writings consistently demonstrate
their physical and mental benefits. In
contrast to earlier works, the current
field experiment examined whether an
ultrashort 50m bout of swimming could
yield positive changes in affect. It also tested
whether swimming aided b...
The affective experience during and after exercise helps determine motivation, commitment, and adherence to sports. Choice reaction time (RT) is critical in decision-making and sports performance. In this within-subjects laboratory experiment, we scrutinized core affect and choice RT in 18 male adolescent basketball players during exercise sessions...
Various levels of lockdown due to COVID-19 limit people’s habitual physical activity. Individuals addicted to exercise, health-oriented, and team-exercisers could be the most affected. We examined the COVID-19-related changes in exercise volume in 1079 exercisers from eight Spanish-speaking nations based on exercise addiction categories, primary re...