Effects Of Personality And Motivation On Sports Performance

Common factors that can contribute to performance anxiety include; fear of performance failure, negative social evaluation and/or physical harm, as well as disruption of a well learned routine (Cox, p.201, 2007). The effects of these factors can be further heightened in correlation with importance of an event, or the level of competition. These fears and feelings of anxiety may affect the athlete’s perception of their abilities and hinder their self-confidence, which can be detrimental to their performance. Patterns of perfectionism can also lead to sport-related anxiety, mainly involving setting exceptionally high performance standards of oneself (Cox, p.202, 2007). Setting high standards can often be beneficial to a performance, but athletes that succumb to unrealistic thoughts, that nothing but a perfect/ideal performance is good enough, are more likely to experience negative emotions and heightened levels of anxiety due to the discrepancy between ideal and current self/situation (Koivula, Hassmén, Fallby, 2001).

Personality is who an individual is, how one does things, manages events and situations, and how one describes other individuals. One 's personality can help guide an individual throughout one 's life, in addition to having power over the situation or task. Many, if not all of these factors of personality, traits, and genetics, make up who an individual is. One 's may believe an individual 's personality, differences, and individualities is the core of who an individual truly is.

Burton, western & Kowaslki (2015) describes Personality as the enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances. In other words it can be defined as differences in characteristics in a person, including their way of thinking, likes, dislikes, sociability, openness, feelings and behaviour, which make them the person they are and differentiates them from others. All these traits when brought together is known to be the personality of that particular person.

For this assignment I will explain the effect of personality and motivation on sports performance.

The word personality is known as quite a diverse concept and can be described differently in accordance to different people, it comes from the word persona which is a Latin term and is referred to as a mask which actors use when performing. Based on this it could be concluded that characteristics which are visible along with external characteristics (the aspects of us in which can be seen by others) is what personality refers to, (Schultz and Scultz, 2004). Another definition of personality by a different psychologist is “The dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviours in various situations.” (Rychman, 1999: 5). There are many areas of personality

Sports—which involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and play—provide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. research has expanded into numerous areas such as imagery training, hypnosis, relaxation training, motivation, socialization, conflict and competition, counseling, and coaching. Specific sports and recreational specialties studied include baseball, basketball, soccer,

Personality, like most core Psychology subjects, is difficult to define. Personality is essentially the science of describing and understanding people. No two people are the same; even identical twins will tell you that they are very different to their identical counterpart. There are some who are anxious and there are those who are risk-takers. There are some who are carefree while there are those who are highly-strung and there are those who are over-confident while some are just plain shy. It is this issue of differences that are fundamental to the study and examination of personality.

Men and women are psychologically different in many ways. Some of these differences include competitiveness, goal orientation, self-confidence, motivation, mental toughness, incentives, preferences, etc. According to Anne Bowker in Sports Participation and Self-Esteem, Men have an advantage over women in sports because they're more aggressive and have higher self-esteem (2003).

There are a lot of aspects that should be taken into account when determining what makes an athlete successful. One could argue that natural ability is one of the determining factors which leads to success. For example, if an athlete has dreams of playing in the NBA then height makes a difference. There aren’t many successful players in the league under six feet tall. One could argue that level of competition plays a role in the development of an athlete. This could include the skill level of the opponent or outside factors such as playing conditions or game circumstances. These types of arguments play a role in athlete success, but will not be used in this paper because they are factors that are out of the athlete’s control. This paper

Personality can be defined as patterns of a person's thoughts, feelings and behaviors in various situations. In its most basic form personality is attitude, values and interests. Personality traits can also be known as behavioral differences. Understanding and appreciating the diverse personalities of others can help people to interact and know why one person might act or respond in a certain way. This appreciation of personality diversity gives respect to the quirks and differences of individuals therefore respecting these differences as strengths.

Personality has been of interest to sport physiologists and researchers for a very long time, dating back to around the 1800s, the reason why it is of such is interest is because they want to find out how personality affects someone when they are doing sport as to what personality makes them better at specific sports compared to other people. But as it is hard to find a direct link from someone’s personality to the specific set of skills they have, there is very little evidence which shows what personality helps someone become good at a specific sport.

When combined with Eysenck’s trait theory this becomes easier to explain how personality affects sports performance. An example of this would be that a person in day to day life could be seen as introverted, but when they partake in sport their traits can change and they can become and extrovert based on the situation they are place in e.g. a football

“Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving” (American Psychological Association, 2017) and is both socially and culturally constructed. The psychology of personality deals with how and why people differ. There is no unifying theory to describe personality, although many descriptions and structures have been proposed. Theories of personality specify the central elements of personality and these are the characteristics by which people differ. Such theories include the psychodynamic, humanistic and trait perspectives.

Arousal is a psychological factor that can affect sports performance and is defined as the level of activation or readiness that an individual will experience when faced with a task (Malpeli 2010, pg. 369). Effective performance requires an athlete to achieve optimal arousal which can be recognised in certain arousal theories (Malpeli 2010, pg. 369). The level of arousal that is considered to be optimal varies among every individual (Abernethy 2013, pg. 304). High arousal can affect performance as it often leads to more tense muscles, higher blood pressures, heart rates and respiration rates (Abernethy 2013, pg. 302). In comparison to high arousal, low arousal can lead to a lack of motivation, tiredness, lethargic muscles and a drop in enthusiasm and concentration and therefore a decrease in performance (Malpeli 2010, pg. 369). Personality is another psychological factor that can affect sports performance and can be defined as the multiple characteristics in which an individual possesses to make them unique (Abernethy 2013, pg. 298). People who are usually introverted like things more quiet and are often good at concentrating whereas people who are extroverts are generally more excited and lack concentration which can affect sports performance (Honeybourne 2003). It can be seen that people with certain traits or characteristics will potentially perform better in particular sports (Abernethy 2013, pg. 299). Another psychological factor that can affect performance is

Personality denotes a person’s distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to various stimuli.