In this master's thesis, we investigated whether there is any correlation between personality traits and aggressiveness in combat sports. In the study, we included four of the most common combat sports in Slovenia: judo, karate, kickbox and taekwondo. We were interested in the causal relationship between personality traits and different forms of aggressiveness in combat sports.
We used the BFI questionnaire to describe five different personality traits and the Buss-Durkee's aggressiveness questionnaire to measure aggressiveness. Additionally, we also asked the participants about their basic information, such as their current status as a qualified sportsman in the Republic of Slovenia, which allowed us to determine their sport success, age, the number of years spent in competitive sports, etc. All hypotheses were either rejected or confirmed with a 5% risk level.
We found that there are statistically significant differences in aggressiveness. In principle, athletes competing in combat sports display higher levels of aggressiveness. We connected the displayed forms of aggressiveness with instrumental aggression, which is otherwise desirable in professional sport. The differences in aggressiveness between the selected martial sports were not significant, but we found that there was a connection between them. We also noticed differences in aggressiveness among more successful athletes as compared to the less successful ones. Furthermore, we found that people, who specialise in combat sports, have a tendency to be more individualistic in comparison with the control group. More successful athletes showed statistically significantly higher levels of consciousness. We did not notice any significant differences in personality between men and women, except in emotional instability. We also found that aggressiveness does not increase with the duration of or experience in the practice of martial arts. Lastly, we noticed a significant correlation between different personality dimensions and common forms of aggressiveness.
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