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Introverted goalie versus extraverted center? Comprehensive investigation of Big Five personality traits within and between team sports

ObjectivesIn team sports, many anecdotes and stereotypes report personality differences between athletes of different playing positions. However, by now research shows ambiguous results and often only single sports have been examined. This preregistered study, thus, represents a first comprehensive investigation of differences in personality traits of athletes (1) performing different team sports, (2) being offense players and defense players, as well as (3) playing on different positions. DesignIn an online survey, we assessed self-reported Big Five personality traits for 2,322 athletes of 16 different (popular – e.g. Basketball and less-known – e.g. Quidditch) team sports using the BFI-2-S (Soto & John, 2017). Further, we assessed their role in the offense and defense phases of a game, their specific playing position as well as demographic and sport-related information.MethodWe descriptively and statistically investigated differences between personality profiles of different team sports, between offense and defense players within sports, and between playing positions within sports. Additionally, we compared different approaches to assessing offense and defense positions. ResultsAthletes playing different team sports significantly differed in the personality traits Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness. However, these effects were small (η2 ranging from .01 to .02). Similarly, offense players were found to be significantly more extraverted than defense players, but the effect was again small (ηp2 = .003). Athletes playing offense and defense positions did not significantly differ in any other personality traits regardless of how we operationalized offense and defense. However, we demonstrated that not all playing positions may be easily categorized into offense and defense. Finally, athletes of different playing positions did not differ significantly in their personality traits. As the only exception, Floorball centers were significantly more extraverted than Floorball defenders explaining only about 5% of the variance in trait extraversion scores.ConclusionOur comprehensive investigation demonstrates that there is only a little evidence for differences in Big Five traits for athletes of different team sports and between athletes being offense or defense players, or athletes playing on different playing positions. Thus, ascribed personality differences might indeed just be reflecting stereotypes.