Discover How Personality and Environment Affect Athletic Performance

Personality and Performance in Sport: Trait Theories, Environmental Factors, and Cognitive Perspective

• Trait theories suggest that personality is made up of inherited secondary traits that influence natural inclinations towards ambition, competition, and aggression.
• Eysenck's personality types include extroverts and introverts, stable and unstable (neurotic), with arousal being a key factor that affects performance.
• Extroverts perform best in high arousal conditions, while introverts are more easily over-aroused.
• Narrow Band Theory proposes two distinct personality types: Type A and Type B.
• Social learning theory suggests that behavior and values are learned from the environment or vicariously by watching others, which is important in developing a sporting ethos or culture within a team.
• Cognitive perspective focuses on specific behaviors and underlying mental processes, employing cognitive restructuring to correct maladaptive thoughts.
• Distorted thoughts in athletes include perfectionist beliefs, catastrophizing about the future, and personalization.
• The interactionist approach suggests that behavior is influenced by inherited traits and learned experience, with unlimited combinations of personality and environmental factors affecting any behavior or response in sport.
• Personality profiling can be useful in predicting those who will excel in particular sports and developing interventions to address personality factors that may impact performance.
• Environmental factors, such as positive and negative role models, also play a significant role in shaping behavior and values in sports.
• The Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests that moderate arousal levels produce the best performance, while over-arousal and under-arousal lead to poorer performance.
• While personality may be an important factor in the participation and performance of sport and exercise, there is no personality profile that reliably distinguishes athletes from non-athletes.