Personality and Sports Performance

Personality and Sports Performance Studies

The growing knowledge about aptitude, abilities, and skills has just begun to explain performance differences, in terms of depending to some extent on the individual's unique and personal and behavioral dispositions. Such dispositions that an individual brings to a performance are not fully understood, neither as to the nature of the predisposition nor as to the predictive value. This is not surprising, given that the field of personality trait theories within psychology is a complex and imprecise science. Yet these theories purport to deal with such issues as the permanence of personality states, the effects of cognitive and perceptual styles, the nature of motivation, and the individual's mode of interpreting learning experiences.

The physical education literature dealing with personality factors and their effects on performance is heavy with implied and stated links between personality development and involvement in appropriately conducted programs of planned physical activity, games, dance, and sport. Most recently, the argument for the existence of these links has fo

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dherer is motivated to achieve and has the determination and perseverance to do whatever work is necessary. This person is more a leader than a follower and may object more than most when restricted or prevented from doing things in his or her own way. These authors found a similar mode of responding among the various sports. Swimmers were not as aggressive as cyclists or triathletes, and they were not as carefree as runners or triathletes. They were more concerned with bodily safety than were the triathletes, and they were more autonomous than runners. Triathletes scored significantly lower than runners and swimmers but did not differ from cyclists on the "harm avoidance" scale. A study by Howard, Cunningham, and Rechnitzer (1987) used longitudinal data to determine the effects of personality on the natural decline in fitness in 121 middle-aged men. At the beginning of the study, personality was assessed using the 16PF. Fitness measures included grip strength, predicted body fatness, and predicted maximum oxygen intake. It was found that the second-order personality dimension, introversion-extroversion, was related to grip strength and predicted maximum oxygen uptake but not to body fatness. In addition, during the 5
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Performance Studies, Roberts Chipps, Rao Overman, Clingman Hilliard, Cattell Eysenck, Cunningham Rechnitzer, University Victoria, Intelligence Test, Sport Behavior, Instruments EPQ, journal sport, personality characteristics, women athletes, team sports, sport behavior, offensive defensive, journal sport behavior, percent type, journal sport psychology, black women, international journal, sport psychology, international journal sport, predicted maximum oxygen, personality sports performance,
Approximate Word count = 2977
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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