Meaning in life of elite athletes: A person-oriented study

People’s subjective sense of meaning in life is a flourishing research topic in psychology but remains underexplored in sport psychology. This study uses a person-oriented method to shed light on meaning in the lives of elite athletes (i.e., latent profile analysis) to identify distinct profiles of sources of meaning in life, and compare the extent to which these profiles differ in relation to athletic identity, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. A sample of 593 Swiss elite athletes (50.4% women, 49.6% men; M_age = 24.78 years, SD = 4.93) participated in the study. The Meaning and Purpose Scales (MAPS) were used to assess athletes’ perceptions of meaningfulness, crisis of meaning, and sources of meaning. Athletes demonstrated higher overall meaningfulness, lower crisis of meaning, and prioritized different sources of meaning compared to the general population. Latent profile analysis revealed three distinct meaning profiles: (1) athletes with multiple meanings (n = 351), (2) athletes with low meaning (n = 126), and (3) faith-based athletes (n = 110). Notably, the athletes in the first and last profile exhibited higher life satisfaction and self-esteem. The identified profiles demonstrate that athletes differ both in the degree and the types of meaning in life. The findings align with studies outside of sport that suggest that meaning in life, in addition to being an end-value in itself, is also related to enhanced life satisfaction and self-esteem. Personalized meaning-focused interventions can be valuable for applied practice with elite athletes.