DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY ON THE BASIS OF SPORTS PRACTICE OR NO SPORTS PRACTICE AND AGE CATEGORY IN PERFORMANCE SOCCER PLAYERS BASED ON COSTA AND MCCRAE�S MODEL

resumen

Alejo Garc�­a-Naveira y Roberto Ruiz-Barqu�­n

In the last decade, there have been some confirmatory results regarding the connection between personality and physical activity and sports. In order to explore this issue, the objectives pursued in the present study are: 1. - To study the differences in personality between performance athletes and non-athletes and 2. - Analyze the differences in personality on the basis of athletes’ age category. For this reason, the NEO -FFI was applied (Costa and McCrae, 2008) to 103 performance soccer players between 14 and 21 years of age and 45 nonathletes aged 18 to 24. The results indicate that adult athletes obtain higher scores on the traits of Emotional Stability, Extraversion and Responsibility than non-athletes, whereas adult athletes obtain higher scores on the traits of Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience and Responsibility that athletes youngers. We conclude that sport performance influences the person facilitating the development of certain traits that are necessary to meet the demands of the context in general and sports in particular.