Being a professor at a football school has its advantages. One is that, even though I don’t get to chill with Nobel Prize winners, I am surrounded by some of the best athletes in the world. So, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the personality traits associated with being a successful athlete.
This research area is sparser than I assumed — I imagine it's a challenge for researchers to get access to high-performing athletes — but there are some recent large studies and reviews. One interesting study I found came out of Poland, where researchers managed to sample over 1000 athletes across a wide variety of sports (Piepiora & Piepiora, 2021). There were some differences in the personalities of each group of athletes, but what stood out to me was the strong role of trait conscientiousness. Trait conscientiousness reflects work ethic, discipline, consistency, and reliability. There was also a clear signal for extraversion, which contains reward-seeking, assertiveness, energy, and drive. Agreeableness and openness scores didn’t seem as relevant, but low neuroticism—or high emotional stability—did stand out.
When the researchers looked at a subset of high-performing, or champion, athletes in their sample, the same basic personality pattern emerged, but in a more elevated form. Champions had somewhat higher conscientiousness, higher extraversion, and lower neuroticism (figure below from Piepiora & Piepiora, 2021).
This study is, of course, limited by culture and a single research lab, but I did find a new meta-analysis—or study of studies—on the Big Five traits and athletic performance. It was a little dense to unpack, but the same signals for higher conscientiousness and higher extraversion were present. Neuroticism wasn’t as clear a predictor. Since it was a meta-analysis, the researchers were able to dive deeper into the data and look at team versus individual sports. Best I could pick out, agreeableness mattered more in team sports, whereas openness mattered more in individual sports.
I also thought it would be interesting to look at sports that aren’t always considered mainstream athletics. Although surfing made it to the Olympics this year, extreme sports like surfing, climbing, base jumping, or skateboarding might present a different personality profile. It turns out there is some difference. Meta analytic research on extreme sports finds elevated levels of extraversion (and sensation-seeking) and lower levels of neuroticism. But you don’t necessarily see the elevated levels of conscientiousness in extreme athletes. My guess is that if you look at the highest-level surfers or climbers, you would find conscientiousness and self-discipline, but as someone who has been around surfers most of my life, I imagine that extraversion—essentially the willingness to just go for it—outweighs conscientiousness. In the line up my brother will yell “charge!” not “be disciplined.”
Finally, I thought it would be fun to look at combat sports like martial arts. This is something I’m not familiar with, as I’m more of a yogi than a fighter. I found one large survey, and the results were actually very similar to the general athlete profile: high conscientiousness, high extraversion, and low neuroticism. I thought that in combat sports you might find lower levels of agreeableness—basically, that people who engage in combat sports might be more combative, competitive, or antagonistic. However, that signal wasn’t in the data, with one exception: Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, lower levels of agreeableness did stand out, but this wasn’t the case in other martial arts. (Note: this could be something about BJJ, or it could be something about the specific sampling - always need more data). The research also looked at people who participate in modern gladiator-type sports and found a similar personality profile.
So, looking across all these studies, it seems that conscientiousness—discipline and work ethic—is central to athletic performance. The notable exception is in extreme sports, like surfing or sky diving, where extraversion seems to carry more weight. And extraversion is also important across other athletic domains. Finally, across most sports, better athletes tend to have lower levels of neuroticism; in other words, they are generally more emotionally stable. The best athletes, the champions, are probably the most emotionally stable, hardest working, and most driven and energized. Agreeableness and openness don’t seem to be as central to athletic success. It’s not that they aren’t important—they just don’t carry as much of the signal on average. My hunch is that with enough data from enough sports we would see interesting differences across sports and even between positions with the same sports.
And, of course, talent matters a lot. And someone with a lot of talent — at least for a short career — can neglect discipline and work ethic. John Daly, for example, is a professional golfer who lives a classic low conscientiousness lifestyle. Basically, he is The Dude with golf skills. This works for him and makes him entertaining for sure. I would love to play a round with him. But my hunch is a little discipline and training might help his game.
Some Citations
Piepiora, P., & Piepiora, Z. (2021). Personality determinants of success in men’s sports in the light of the big five. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(12), 6297.
Yang, J. H., Yang, H. J., Choi, C., & Bum, C. H. (2024). Relationship between Athletes’ Big Five Model of Personality and Athletic Performance: Meta-Analysis. Behavioral Sciences, 14(1), 71.
Savage, D., Chan, H. F., Moy, N., Schaffner, M., & Torgler, B. (2020). Personality and individual characteristics as indicators of lifetime climbing success among Everest mountaineers. Personality and Individual differences, 162, 110044.
Piepiora, P., & Witkowski, K. (2020). Personality profile of combat sports champions against neo-gladiators. Arch. Budo, 16(1), 281-293.
McEwan, D., Boudreau, P., Curran, T., & Rhodes, R. E. (2019). Personality traits of high-risk sport participants: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 79, 83-93.