PERSONALITY TRAITS

Personality Traits

Personality Traits

Introduction

Traits refer to the characteristics that distinguish individuals from one another. They are used to describe, explain, understand, and predict behavior (Ross, Nisbett, 2006). However, unlike height or weight, traits cannot be assessed directly but must always be inferred from behavior.

A trait is a disposition to behave in a particular way across a range of situations. People with a strong tendency to consistently behave in a particular way are described as being high on these traits (Peterson, 2002). Human behavior can be organized into a hierarchy.

Discussion

Researchers of trait theory have often developed lists of characteristics that they believed were related to successful personality of a professional tennis player. In creating such lists, some researchers mixed together very different attributes. Some personality traits that are aspects of behaviors and skills, in addition to other traits that were related to temperament and intellectual ability. These traits typically include characteristics such as self-confidence, intelligence, ambition, perseverance, assertiveness, emotional stability, creativity, and motivation (Pervin, 2007). The lists, however, were not exhaustive and typically omitted some important leadership attributes. A professional tennis player needs to inculcate following personality traits to succeed in his career.

Physical vitality and stamina

Mental toughness

Intelligence and action-oriented judgment

Skill in dealing with people

Need for achievement

Courage and resolution

Self-confidence

Assertiveness

Adaptability/flexibility (Mischel, 2008).

Clearly, active and passive toughening are the most relevant manipulations for athletes and can be applied in a number of practical ways. Stress inoculation training is an obvious application, but this is probably best approached with the aid of a sport psychologist (Loehlin, Willerman, Horn, 2008). Since I am a sport psychologist, I will give some examples of how mental over-load may be applied to training sessions in order to achieve some degree of toughening.

Rod Laver, the Australian tennis legend, has described how he used practice sessions to simulate 'tough' match conditions (Hampson, 2008). Laver felt that fatigue placed great strain on the concentration which was crucial to success in long matches. To simulate these conditions, Laver forced himself to concentrate and work even harder during the latter stages of training sessions, when he was tired, so that he became used to the mental strain of such conditions (Goldberg, 2003). He has cited this as one of the key factors in his long-lasting success.

Simulation training is a great way to prepare mentally for the challenges of competition, and this can include mental as well as physical stressors (Digman, 2008). One of the concerns about such lists is that the attributes typically associated with successful tennis players are often perceived as “male” traits. Reportedly, when men and women are asked about the other player's characteristics, significant patterns emerge, with both men and women tending to see successful tennis players as male.

Although there is agreement at the level of a general definition, there is a lack of consensus among personality theorists about the specifics of the trait concept, particularly with regard to the epistemological status of traits and their causal potency (Buss, Cantor, 2005). At one extreme, some theorists claim that traits exist ...