Personality
Personality is a combination of characteristics and qualities that make someone unique.
It's very important that coaches know a players personality for many reasons. One is that it helps coaches understand what type of training is most suitable to the players so that they can train better and perform better in their sport. Another being is that players relate better to those who understand them. Finally, coaches that are able to understand their players' behavior can make them predictable and easier to handle.
There are two types of viewpoints of the influence of personality on sports performance: Credulous and Sceptical.
The credulous viewpoint is that personality assessments can be used to predict sporting success. People who have a credulous viewpoint believe that traits can predict sporting success.
The sceptical viewpoint is that personality assessments are limited in predicting the chances of sporting success. People who have a sceptical viewpoint are those who don't believe that personality traits predict success.
The Trait Perspective of Personality
The trait perspective is a theory that people are born with established characteristics. This means that the traits that people have are innate (Born with same traits as parents), stable (how predictable their behavior is) and enduring (long lasting).
To be more specific, the trait theory suggest that a personality trait is genetically inherited. A trait is durable and consistent in a given situation. The trait theory suggests that behavior is predictable and views behavior as being more predictable than it really is. The trait theory doesn't take into account that people adapt their behavior in response to a given environmental situation.
Eysenck's Personality Inventory (EPI)
Eysenck's theory is a specific theory of the trait perspective.
The EPI groups personality traits into two dimensions or scales: Introvert to Extrovert and Stable to Neurotic. Eysenck used a questionnaire to measure traits, known as the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and it would arrange the findings on a two-dimensional model, where the model has four categories: stable extrovert (someone who shows lively, sociable and leader qualities), neurotic extrovert (someone who shows aggressive, impulsive and active qualities), stable introvert (someone who shows calm, passive and controlled qualities) and neurotic introvert (someone who shows moody, unsociable and quiet qualities). A stable introvert would be best suited to situations that involves teamwork, for example a line of defense in football. A neurotic extrovert would be best suited to situations involving hostility, for example a fight in hockey. A stable introvert would be best suited in controlled situations, for example a free throw in basketball. A neurotic introvert wouldn't be best suited in a lot of sport situations. for example, being a captain for a football team.
Girdano's Narrow Band Theory of Personality
Girdano's theory is another specific theory of the trait perspective.
The narrow band theory believes that there are two types of personalty: type A and type B.
Type A personality is characterized by: impatience, works at a rapid pace, higher levels of stress, easily aroused, strong desire to succeed, anxiety in stressful situations, lacking in tolerance, has a need to be in control, makes decisions quickly without much preparation or thought. Type A personality would be useful when in football, a player needs to score before the time runs out to win the match, so he needs a very strong desire to win, work at a rapid pace and make a decision quickly without too much thought.
Type B personality is characterized by: patient and relaxed, allow time for tasks to be completed, tolerance of others' mistakes, delegates easily, low personal stress, calm and unflappable in most situations, less competitive, prepared to wait and assess all options when decisions need to be made. Type B would be useful as well in football when a player needs to score from a free kick in order to win the match, so the player has to be relaxed, patient, calm, assesses all options and unflappable in the situation.
In terms of sports, type A personality would be more suitable than type B, because type A is more competitive than type B.
Cattell's 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire
Raymond Cattell believes that personality could be best explained by a model that has sixteen personality traits, using a statistical procedure known as factor analysis. He then created and promoted the 16PF Questionnaire. This test uses a public domain scales from the International Personality Item Pool to measure the same traits. The traits are warmth, reasonable, emotionally stable, dominant, lively, rule-conscious, socially bold, sensitive, vigilant, abstract, private, apprehensive, opened to change, self-reliant, perfectionist and tense. Each trait is given a score of 0-4, 0 meaning you show none of this trait, and 4 meaning you clearly show this trait.
Each trait is best suited to some situations. For example, a captain in football needs to be dominant when a teammate makes a very bad mistake, so he needs to tell the player to stop worrying and continue playing the game. Another example, a shooting guard in basketball needs to be opened to change his style of play as his current style of play isn't working against a player marking him, so instead of dribbling all the time he needs to pass the ball more and try and find space for an open shot. Another example, a mixed martial arts fighter needs to be abstract when his opponent is able to predict most of his actions, so the fighter, instead of just doing simple jabs and front kicks, he can change his style by going for take downs, back kicks, high knees or anything he doesn't normally use in his other fights.
Evaluation of the Trait Perspective
What's good about the trait perspective is that it has many trait theories which measures and identifies a wide range of traits each person could possibly have.
However, the problem with the trait theories is that it doesn't confirm whether the traits exist or not, and it has a lack of sophistication.
Social Learning Theory of Personality
The social learning theory, or situation approach, believes that personality is determined by the environment and the experiences a person has as they grow up. This sees personality as the result of being nurture or upbringing. #
There are two mechanisms of learning, modelling and social reinforcement. Modelling is when we observe and imitate the behavior of significant others. Social reinforcement is when if the behavior is praised or rewarded positively, it is more likely that it will be repeated.
Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment
Bandura had an experiment where 66 nursery children were divided into 3 groups. All groups will watch a short film of an adult (the model) punching and kicking the bobo doll. However, each group will see a different condition. One group will see a condition where an adult was praising the model for his behavior. Another group will see a condition where an adult was punishing the model for his behavior. The final group will see the last condition where the model was neither being punished or rewarded for his behavior. After observing the behavior of the model, the groups of children were allowed to go in the play room with the doll. The children that watched the model being praised by an adult, imitated the behavior of the model and attacked the doll. Most of the children that saw the model being punished by the adult, didn't imitate the behavior will the rest did. Finally, half of the children who didn't see the model being rewarded or punished imitated the behavior, whilst the other half didn't.
The social learning theory has a relevance to sports because this is mostly likely to happen to children who like to play the sports and watch their favorite players compete. For example, a 12 year old boy plays for a football team. He also watches and supports Barcelona football club and his idol is Lionel Messi. One time, the boy sees Messi get into a tangle with the opposing player and Messi is being aggressive towards the player, whilst the fans are cheering Messi for his behavior. After observing Messi's behavior and observing the praise of the behavior, the child believes that the behavior is completely acceptable. When the child plays in a match and gets into a similar situation with an opposing player, the child imitates Messi's behavior and gets aggressive.
Evaluation of Social Learning Theory
What's good about the theory is that is gives us an understanding of why people behave in certain ways, due to past experiences and observations. However, the problem with social learning theory is that it doesn't take into account personality traits are innate dispositions. Also, the situation approach is difficult to use to predict behavior and analyse why some people are more successful than others. Finally, the theory isn't a true predictor of behaviour.
The Interactionist Theory of Personality
The interactionist theory believes that personality is natured and nurtured. Interaction is a combination of trait and social learning. Traits are triggered by the environment, personalities can change in different situations, typical responses are influenced by the situation and behaviour is unpredictable and is a product of circumstances.
Hollander's Personality Structure
Hollander proposed that personality has three levels that interact to form personality: Psychological core, Typical Response and Role-Related Behaviour.
The psychological core is the centre of personality, it's known to be stable and remains relatively constant over time, and believes and values will be more or less permanent. that For example, a sportsman's belief that fair play underlies his attitude on the field playing.
Typical Response is changeable and learned behaviours. They become modified as the person responds to the environment. For example, stopping fighting at the bell.
Role-related behaviour is dynamic and changeable. An individual adjusts to fulfil many different roles. In other situations we may behave differently. For example, striking after the bell when annoyed or frustrated.
Profile of Mood States (POMS)
The profile of mood states is a questionnaire that was created by Morgan and would be completed before the competition. It's based on the proposition that an individual with positive mental health will more likely succeed in a sporting situation. Morgan showed that if an athlete can exhibit the trait of vigour above the populations norms and all other traits below the population norm then their chances of success are greatly enhanced. This is known as the iceberg profile.
The traits of the iceberg profile are tension, depression, anger, vigour, fatigue and confusion.
Elite athletes will have a low level of tension, depression and confusion and a high level of vigour. Unsuccessful athletes will have a high level of tension, depression, fatigue and confusion and low level of vigour.
Each trait affects performance. If a player is tense then they won't be able to think clearly and would make bad decisions. For example, If basketball player needs to make a pass, he'll try and pass the ball to a player who is behind an opposing player who would then intercept the pass, therefore the passing player would concede a turnover.
If a player has a high level of depression, they would have a lot of self-doubt and more likely feel like they can't do anything good in a game, which would destroy their performance. For example, a football player has so much levels of depression, when he's through on goal and has a good chance of scoring, he doesn't think he can score and passes it back to a teammate, only for the defense and midfield to come back and defend the goal, therefore the player has wasted an opportunity.
If a player has a high level of anger, they would get frustrated easily and would want to take their anger out on someone or something and get punished in the end. For example, when a football player feels frustrated because they conceded a goal and is losing the match, that frustration turns to anger and attempts to hurt the opposing player by making a bad tackle, and because of the that the ref gives a red card and gets sent off.
If a player has a high level of fatigue, they wouldn't be able to perform as great as they normally would and their performance would drop. For example, if a marathon runner had so much fatigue, they wouldn't be able to run any longer and wouldn't be able to finish the marathon.
If a player had a high level of confusion, they wouldn't know how to play the sport and their performance would decline. For example, if a football player didn't understand what the offside rule was and tried to pass it to a teammate who was offside, the linesman would call it and give the ball away.
If a player had a higher level of vigour, then the player will be more likely to do better in their sport.
For example, if a basketball player had a higher level of vigour, then he would have a lot more energy to play longer in the game and a lot of effort to try and perform better in the game.
Evaluation of the Interactionist Theory
The interactionist theory is believed to be the most realistic approach, and the reasons being is because combines trait and social learning approach, it takes into account that different situations produce different patterns of behavior, and it's more likely that traits interact with the environment to predict personality.
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