Explaining Personalty in Sport Psychology

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Psychology usually assumes that people are pretty much the same but this neglects to consider significant differences between people. There are two keys subject areas in the study of human individual differences: personality and mental abilities; including the concept of intelligence.
Psychometric measurement enables us to examine both the common characteristics and the differences among people. Research into sports personality has been around since 1800’s
Jenkins (2005) defines personality as “a person’s characteristic patterns of behavior that contribute to his or her uniqueness”. In other words, personality is one of the psychological factors that make each individual different.

There are three main approaches in sports psychology that are used to explain personality and how it can affect sports performance: trait approach, situational approach and interactional approach.
We will review each of there theories, in order to try to work out whether or not personality affects sports performance.

TRAIT APPROACH

Eysenck and Cattell both developed theories based on the idea of traits. Those theories suggest that anyone’s personality is made of characteristics/traits that mostly define the way the individual will behave in a situation. Traits are defined as “a person’s predisposition to behave in a predictable way” (Jenskins, 2005). Eysenck and Cattell suggest that traits are relatively stables, long lasting characteristics and therefore enable us to predict someone’s behaviour.
Eysenck (1950) suggests that personality is “the sum-total of the actual or potential behavior-patterns of the organism, as determined by heredity and environment”. Eysenck developed a Personality Inventory (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1964) (se...

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...letes, nonlean sport athletes, and nonathletes on behavioral and psychological indices of eating disorders. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 8(2), pp.218-230

- Schurr, K.T., Ashley, M.A., and Joy, K.L., 1977. A multivariate analysis of male athlete characteristics: Sport type and success. Multivariate Experimental Clinical Research, 3, pp.53-68.

- Sword, L., 2002. The Gifted Introvert.
Available at: http://talentdevelop.com/articles/GiftIntrov.html [Accessed 19 April 2014].

- Talyabee, S. R., Moghadam, R. S. and Salimi, M., 2013. The investigation of personality characteristics in athlete and non-athlete students. European Journal of Experimental Biology, [online]
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- Weinberg, R.S., and Gould,D., 1995. Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics

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