Know the effect of personality and motivation on

sports performance

“Personality is the sum of an individual’s characteristic which make

them unique.”

(www.teachpe.com/sports)

Personality comes from the individual and remains fairly consistent

throughout life. Personalities are often described by how introverted or
extroverted the individual is.
Knowledge about personality is important to ensure optimum sporting
performance. In a sporting game, a performer’s personality can have a
direct effect on the decisions that they make during a game.
Personality can help you get into teams because depending on the way
you act would help you to get on with other individuals and able you to
become even better at your sport.
(Sport book1 level 3 by Mark Adams/ Ray Barker/ ECT)
Personality shouldn’t affect whether or not you get picked for a sports
team. It should be determined by your ability of your performance and
your decision making.
For example the Trait Theory suggests that individuals have certain
characteristics that will partly determine how they behave. The trait
theory says that if you are born with certain characteristics or traits such
as, determination, skills and if you are a competitive person you are more
likely to be good at sport. For example if some one who wants to win
trophies and medals in football the will play better and want to do better
than someone who is just having a kick about with their friends.
There are two main types to personality:
• Introverted people tend to
be quiet and thoughtful.
There energy can be drained
around other people. They
do not seek excitement and
like a calm environment and
hate the unexpected. They
are better at tasks which do
not seek attention. For
example people who play
darts are normally
 introverted people because they are in a calm and relaxed
environment.
• Extroverted people are more loud and excitable. They like
excitement and seek excitement. They become bored quickly and
have very bad concentration. Extroverted people are said to be
better in sporting environments than introverted because they are
able to cope with competitive and distracting situations. For
example on a football pitch if it is a final and there are loads of
people watching and cheering, Extroverted people will be able to
deal with the situation better.
The trait theory concludes personality alone can not predict success in a
sporting environment. But it can be helped to explain why individuals
choose certain sports than others.
(Sport book1 level 3 by Mark Adams/ Ray Barker/ ECT)
Another theory ‘Social learning theory’ this focuses on the learning that
occurs within a social context. It considers that people learn from one
another, including observational learning, imitation, and modelling. This
could mean that some players copy
other ones. For example young
children could look up to such as
David Beckham. Some children
could look up to the wrong players
such as Roy Kean because on the
pitch he shows too much
aggression, the wrong mentality
and a bad attitude. This is why you
should be careful about who your
players look up to and how they
act. If someone is aggressive you
should tone their attitude down and if someone is quite you should make
them confident, by giving those more roles to full fill or more leadership.
Bandura was a leading psychologist and he came up with four main
stages:
1. Attention- If an athlete is to learn through observation they must
have a certain level of respect and high opinion for the person they
are observing. If the model is a high achiever, successful and
attractive then they will keep the athletes attention.
2. Retention- For the model to be effective the athlete must be able to
recap the skill or behaviour which the model showed.
3. Motor reproduction- This is where the athlete must be able to
physically copy what they have observed.
 4. Motivational response- If the athlete is not motivated, they will not
want to carry out the first three stages. Motivation is a very
important part because depending if you have it or not will decided
whether you want to carry out a task. Motivation comes from the
amount of feedback, praise and achievement which the athlete has.
(www.teachpe.com/sports)

To be able to predict behaviour in sporting situations, you need to

consider how the situation and personality links and works together. This
is known as 'Interactional view'. This theory suggests that when
situational factors are particularly strong, for example, in a competitive
game of rugby when a try is scored, you are more likely to predict
behaviour. An athlete who tends to be quiet and shy is more likely to
make a bigger celebration and show off to the crowd.
For example Wane Rooney, has a big personality and says what he wants
to say. This is shown on a football pitch as he will argue with the referee
if he thinks they are wrong and will always show a big celebrating if he
scores.
In the Martens Schematic view, personality is seen as having three
different levels which relate to each other.
• Psychological core – This is what people call the “real you” and
this is what contains your viewpoint, morals, attitudes and
interests. These are seen as being constant or secure.
• Typical responses – This is the usual way in which you respond to
dissimilar situations which you may find yourself in. For example
getting angry when you miss an easy shot in netball.
• Role- related behaviour – This is determined by circumstances
you find yourself in and this is one of the most unstable aspects of
personality.
By placing your athlete under one of these categories you are able to
know why they behave it different ways. It will help you decide how you
can help find which ways of learning best helps them.
This can also show how motivated a certain player is. The achievement
motivation theory, by Atkins in 1964, suggested motivation comes from
the individual’s personality and it is there motivation to want success. It
is what makes an athlete want to carry on trying even when they are
failing to do well or there are barriers in the way.
(Sport book1 level 3 by Mark Adams/ Ray Barker/ ECT)
Psychodynamic theory saying that personality is made up of conscious
and unconscious parts.
(Sport book1 level 3 by Mark Adams/ Ray Barker/ ECT)
There are three parts which makes up this. The first part is the instinctive
drive which makes you do certain things with out thinking about them.
For example in a football game you may get so worked up if someone
fouls you and they do not get called up for it you may shout or do
something impractical, which you do not think about until it is done. The
second part is your ego, it is the conscious part. It is your self-image and
opinion of you, it is in between the ID and the super ego, ego makes the
best decision between the both of them. The last part is your super ego
which is your moral conscience. It is what you think is best.
The effect of ego and super ego has a great effect in sport. For example in
netball a player may not want to take a penalty and may want to give it to
their other player because they are afraid that they will miss. This is your
supper ego; you do not want to do it because you think it is the right thing
is to pass to someone else.
The Psychodynamic approach try’s to understand the individual as a
whole. This is hardly used in sport as it tends to ignore the athletes
environment.
This approach allows the coach too look at your players or athlete as a
complete and be able to find out how their attitude can behaviour can
affect the way in which they train or how compete. It also allows the
coach to work out how motivation is affecting their game as motivation is
very important, because with out it there would be no reason for anyone
to want to obtain a skill and there would be no drive to learn and achieve
success. There would also be no need to achieve a sustained involvement
in anything.
But this approach ignores the environment around the athlete. The
environment is important because you need to see if the environment has
something to do with how the athlete performers and thinks, or if
different environments effect how the athlete performs in different
situations.
 Bibliography

• www.teachpe.com/sports

• Sport level 3 – Mark Adams/ Ray Barker/ Adam Gledhill/ Chris

Lydon/ Chris Muligan/ Pam Phillippo/ Louise Sutton