Does personality matter for physical activity and sport involvement?

The promotion of physical activity (PA) has mainly based its effectiveness on the adoption of behavior change theories that scarcely consider the impact of personality dispositions. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between personality traits and involvement in physical activity and sports. In particular, it aims to evaluate personality individual differences in athletes and non-athletes, team-sport and individual-sport athletes, male and female athletes. A sample of 1555 participants (1347 athletes; 208 non-athletes) took part in this research. Participants filled out a questionnaire assessing socio-demographics and sport related information. Personality traits were assessed through a short list of adjectives referring to the Big Five model. One-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and separate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were performed to estimate main effects and interaction effects. Results showed that athletes score higher than non-athletes in each of the Big Five (energy, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotion stability and openness) [F(10,3100)=18.974, p<0.001, η²=0.058]. Interaction analysis suggested that gender might moderate the differences in energy [F(2,553)=4.010; p<.05; η²=.014] and conscientiousness [F(2,553)=4.740; p<.01; η²=.017]. Further results indicated that individual sport athletes tend to be more conscientious, more open minded but less emotional stable than team sport athletes [F(5,1340)=10.290, p<0.001, η²=0.037]. Current findings may help to clarify personal determinants that are related to the tendency to be involved in physical activities as well as personality risk factors associated to physical inactivity. They might be useful to outline focused preventive PA programs tailored on personality individual differences.