Abstract
We examined the independent and interactive effects of the Big-Five personality traits on dispositional coping and coping effectiveness among athletes. Participants were 400 athletes (mean age 22.97, s = 7.00) from the UK. The athletes completed measures of personality, dispositional coping, and coping effectiveness. The Big-Five personality traits independently predicted the use of higher order coping dimensions. Extraversion, agreeableness, and openness positively predicted task-oriented coping. Neuroticism positively predicted distraction-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Both extraversion and neuroticism positively predicted disengagement-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Only neuroticism predicted coping effectiveness, which emerged as a negative predictor. Findings also showed a two-way interaction effect for predicting task-oriented coping between neuroticism and openness, and between extraversion and neuroticism. A further two-way interaction effect for predicting distraction-oriented coping was found between agreeableness and conscientiousness. These findings reinforce the need to investigate not only independent, but also interactive effects of personality dimensions upon sport-related dispositional coping.
Highlights
ParticipantsCoping was assessed using the Dispositional Coping Inventory for Competitive Sport (DCICS; Hurst et al, 2011)
This study shows evidence of the influence of the Big-Five factor model on stress and coping process in sport, the
In Step 3, the Big-Five personality traits interactions indicated a significant overall model accounting for 11.3% of variance for predicting coping effectiveness (R2 = .11, F17,382 = 2.87, p < .001)
Summary
Coping was assessed using the Dispositional Coping Inventory for Competitive Sport (DCICS; Hurst et al, 2011) This instrument assesses three higher-order dispositional dimensions (e.g., distraction-oriented coping, disengagement-oriented coping, and task-oriented coping) based on 10 different dispositional coping strategies. These represent what athletes normally use to cope with stress in sport. This instrument assessed how effectively the athletes were coping with the stressor that was causing them the most worry in sport Items in this questionnaire include “The ways I try to cope with this problem are not working too well these days,” “I am dealing with this stressor better that I used to” and “I can find more or different ways to cope with this stressor.”. The coping effectiveness scale has been shown to have an acceptable internal reliability of .69 from a sample of 141 family caregivers (Gottlieb & Rooney, 2004) and was .60 in the current study
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