Psychological Aspects PERSONALITY Psychological Aspects 2

LEARNING OUTCOMES Use of personality testing Profile of mood states

PERSONALITY TESTING Measuring personality is difficult because there is no clear definition as to what personality is! Tests can be measured in the following ways: Questionnaires Interviews Observations

QUESTIONNAIRES Most common way of attempting to measure a person’s personality. Requires some sort of self report (16 personality factor questionnaire designed by CATTELL). Very popular due to being cheap and easy to produce and administer. Fairly reliable and can be used anywhere. Produce a considerable amount of data that can be analysed.

TASK Complete a personality factor questionnaire to gain a greater insight into how your personality is made up.

INTERVIEWS Try to assess personality through discussions with respondents. A series of questions or interpretation of drawings. Greater validity than questionnaires and can uncover issues within the individual as answers are not to limited yes or no. Lower reliability than questionnaires as dependent on ability of interviewer to interpret answers. Also an expensive and time consuming way of interpreting data.

OBSERVATIONS In behavioural observations, the responses and actions of participants are recorded and analysed. Observing individual’s behaviour in a real life setting has the advantage that the person is more likely to operate as they would naturally. Very expensive and time consuming and also have low validity. It is difficult to interpret the behaviour of the participant because they might know they are being watched.

PROFILE OF MOOD STATES Used in sport to illustrate a difference between successful and less successful sportspeople. The difference is based on mood states and coping abilities as opposed to more enduring personality traits. Designed to measure the following Tension Depression Anger Vigour Fatigue Confusion

Unsuccessful athletes score equally across all mood states. Successful athletes scored higher on anger and vigour but score lower on depression, fatigue, and confusion. Elite athletes score higher on the positive mood of vigour and lower on the negative moods of depression, fatigue, and confusion. Unsuccessful athletes score equally across all mood states. Suggestion that the absence of an iceberg is an indication that something is wrong E.g. overtrained swimmers showed lower than expected scores on vigour and higher scores on fatigue, depression, and confusion.

PROBLEMS WITH P.O.M.S The main problem is that these results can be assumed for ALL athletes. Not all elite performers show an iceberg profile. Could suggest that by becoming successful athletes, the elite performers acquire self-confidence and ‘feel-good’ factors that lead them to develop positive mood states.