A study of Personality Types, Sports Motivation, and Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger among Individual and Team Sport Athletes

Abstract

Elite athletes are prone to experience mental health issues owing to the highly competitive and stressful nature of their practice. Specific stressors like excessive media scrutiny, injuries, impractical goal setting, and low motivation, are some common factors that have a negative impact on mental health. Competitive nature of athletes is reflected in the amount of hard work, focus and determination they put into their performance. Majority of the focus is on improvement of skill to succeed in achieving the desired results. Competition therefore serves as a means for them to satisfy their need to win. Sports motivation turns out to be a core attribute of competitive athletes. Those athletes who are high on sports motivation derive it from their competitive nature. Any obstacle or hindrance in goal achievement leads to frustration that results in aggression. The research aimed to study the relationship of Personality Types, Sports Motivation and Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger among Individual and Team Sport Athletes. Standardized tools were used to measure Personality Types, Sports Motivation, and Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger among individual and team sport athletes. A total sample of 64 athletes (N=64, Individual sport = 32, Team sport = 32) in the age of 18-25 years were collected. The results found group differences between individual and team sport athletes in Sports motivation, with individual athletes scoring higher than team sport athletes. Both positive and negative significant correlations were found between different sub-dimensions of Personality types and Competitive aggressiveness and anger. Positive correlations were found between Sports motivation and Competitive aggressiveness and anger.It can be concluded that sports psychology plays a complementary role in the enhancement of athletes’ performance when it comes to gaining the winning edge, given current research findings on this topic.