Relationship of Personality Traits and Competitive Trait Anxiety in Individual Event Sports

Lim, Kleven Jin Yew (2022) Relationship of Personality Traits and Competitive Trait Anxiety in Individual Event Sports. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

Text Kleven Lim Jin Yew_Full Text.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (1MB)

Abstract

Competitive anxiety is a negative emotional feeling that severely impairs sports performance when competing in sports. Some studies indicated that specific personality traits might have an influence on the development of depressive and anxiety symptoms, especially in individual sports athletes (Pluhar et al. 2019). Nevertheless, the influence of personality traits on competition anxiety is still not clearly understood. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between personality trait and competitive anxiety among students who enrolled in the co-curriculum program in individual sports, specifically in badminton, swimming, squash, tennis and taekwondo. Two hundred and forty-three recreational college participants competing in the co-curriculum program participated in this study. Personality characteristics and competitive anxiety were assessed using the Big Five Inventory and Sports Anxiety Scale-2 respectively. Relationships between personality and competitive anxiety were analysed using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Additionally, multiple regression analysis was used to measure the contributions of personality on competitive anxiety. The correlation analysis showed that only extraversion (r = -0.212, p = 0.001) and neuroticism (r = 0.486, p < 0.001) were significantly correlated with competitive anxiety. Multiple regression analysis revealed the neuroticism (β = 0.540) and conscientiousness (β = 0.157) had positive effects on competitive anxiety with percentage of prediction of 25.9%. The findings concluded that even though personality traits can be used to predict to competitive anxiety in individual sports athletes, only Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were significantly positive predictors of competitive anxiety. In addition, gender did not moderate the relationships between the dimensions of personality traits and competitive anxiety