Personality in sport
Some thoughts on how personality effects sport and behaviours
Does our sport selection affect our personality or does our personality affect the sports we select?
One of my classes this semester at uni looks at the psychological aspects of sport and exercise. This past week, one of the topics was called personality in sport. Which, crazily enough, looked into personality and its relation to sport particularly around psychological testing. To understand this the module began with looking into personality from a pure psychological standpoint and then tied it to sport. However, it was during this transition in which a couple sentences really caught my eye – “A meta-analysis (…) showed that extraversion and conscientiousness were positively correlated with physical activity levels (Rhodes et al., 2002 [1])” and “Athletes who played high-risk and team sports score higher on extraversion and lower on conscientiousness than athletes who play low-risk and individual sports (Allen et al., 2013 [2]).”
So, what does this all mean and why is it interesting to me. Just before we get into that lets set some definitions. Firstly personality, this is what we are talking about, and it will be mentioned a lot so it’s probably best to get it out the way first: the combination of characteristics that make a person unique. This is my own definition which I have adapted from the same module I mention above but I feel it is a touch more poetic and wholistic of what personality is and how people can share certain characteristics but are still not the same person. Secondly introversion and extraversion; being connected as ends of a spectrum (thanks google) I like to define them as how a person feels about energy in social environments. Those who are more extraverted will find social settings energising and refreshing whereas those who are more introverted will tend to find the same settings more draining and feel refreshed in more quiet environments. I also want to highlight that this is a spectrum so whilst there theoretically is someone who is the most extraverted and the most introverted, you probably fall somewhere in between. Finally, conscientiousness needs to also be defined. I like the definition from the website Thomas.co [3] which defines it as “a trait associated with awareness.” Other common words are diligent, organised and hard working.
So, now these are out the way looking back on the two study findings about physical activity, behaviour and sport selection it got me thinking. Do the sports we play shape our personality or is it our personality that shape the sports we play and exceed at? It’s a bit like the nature vs nurture debate (which is a topic I want to talk about in a later post) or another classic the chicken or the egg. What I mean by that is to me (and my rather limited knowledge of this) it is a bit of both. This answer is a bit wishy washy I know but welcome to the world of sports research lol! To elaborate, we don’t necessarily pick a sport because it aligns with our personality, but we do thrive when they match. This is derived from my own personal experience. Growing up I played basketball at an ok level (higher than just the domestic weekend comps, but not really near any 1st or 2nd teams when I was playing in the Victorian junior basketball league). I really did love the sport, but it wasn’t the best fit for my personality. I see myself as more on the introverted side and conscientious, so to see my effort on the court not always contribute to the team result was a tough pill to swallow and eventually the that and some team chemistry issues in my last couple years drove me from the sport at that level. Luckily, I found running and it was almost a perfect fit in that my result was almost entirely dependent on my effort.
The next part is how personality and the environment/situation interact with our behaviour. I am defining behaviour in the broad context of “our actions” to minimise the common link to emotions which whilst important can just be lumped in with physical actions for the time being. Being more math/science brained I like to think of the interaction as almost an equation:
Digging into approaches to understand personality (also thanks to uni) there are a six currently, but I want to highlight three that tie into my equation really well. These three are also the most common in the current literature on personality. First is the trait approach. This theory states that we all have “traits” which are arbitrary units of personality that are relatively stable and enduring and (most importantly) can be used to predict our behaviour in a variety of situations [4]. There is the caveat that traits predispose behaviour but not guarantee it! To put it into our equation rather crudely:
So, the approach I next want to touch on is the exact opposite, the situation approach. It theorises that the behaviour is largely determined by the situation. This is done through two ways, modelling – when we observe what others do and imitate – and reinforcement – if we are rewarded for doing something we are more likely to do it again [5]. So, what does this look like in our crude equation:
So, if there is theory for essentially two opposite arguments, which are we to believe? Well, luckily, we can take the secret third option with the interactional approach. This is the most common approach used by sport and exercise psychologists. This one as alluded to proposes personality and environment as co-determinates of behaviour. This makes our equation look familiar:
The interactional approach also emphasises that behaviour is a product of personality and environment not a sum. This makes sense to me as the slight changes in situation can have a big change in behaviour. The example I go to is clutch factor in sports. Those minutes towards the end of close games seem so much bigger than the same time halfway through the first quarter or half, yet you can argue a missed shot or goal at either time could be the difference in the end. Whilst there are a lot more factors than just time point in this situation to keep it simple the “relatively” small change in environment can have a massive change in behaviour (making or missing the shot/goal etc) depending on an athlete’s personality (their confidence in ability to score).
What are the takeaways from this. For me, it is a good chance to reflect on what my personality is and if it’s a fit for running. Maybe it’s a good chance to see if your personality fits the sport/s you love too. Despite personality not being predictive of performance, do you find your personality helps you thrive in your sport too, or even work? Finally, if you want to thrive in your sport do you maybe need to work on changing certain aspects of personality to do so. Is that even possible?
Reference list
2. https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/2109/1/Allen%2C%20Greenlees%20%26%20Jones%20%282013%29.pdf
3. https://www.thomas.co/resources/type/hr-blog/conscientiousness-personality-trait
Super interesting.
Also makes you think about the difference between personality traits between road runners and trail / ultra runners too.