Imagery and personality: A research on athletes in contact and non-contact sports

IMAGERY AND PERSONALİTY: A RESEARCH ON ATHLETES İN CONTACT AND NON-CONTACT SPORTS The aim of this research is to determine the personality traits and imagery dimensions of the individuals dealing with various sports types according to some demographic characteristics and to reveal the relationships between these concepts. 290 athletes voluntarily participated in this study. Of those athletes, 105 of them were women and 185 of them were men; 178 of them were under the age of 22 years and 112 of them were over the age of 23 years. Convenience sampling method was used for accessing the participants. Survey method was appied in data collection phase. Survey form consisted of three sections. First section contains a personal information form which is created by the researcher, second section contains the Big Five Personality Questionnaire Turkish Form (B5KT-50-Tr), third section contains the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SİE). SPSS 24 package program was used to analyze the data. Independent samples t-test was used for the comparison of independent variables between two groups, one-way ANOVA was used for the comparison of independent variables between four groups, and correlation analysis methods were used to determine the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the two scales. In findings significant differences were found in the sub-dimensions of cognitive general imagery, cognitive special imagery, motivational general mastery, motivational special imagery according to demographic variables. It was determined that the athletes who had a higher sports age and who were national were statistically higher than athletes who had lower sports age and who were non-national in cognitive general imagery, cognitive special imagery, motivational general mastery and motivational special imagery sub-dimensions. Significant differences were found in the sub-dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability according to demographic variables. When the relationships between imagery dimensions and personality traits in athletes were examined, significant positive relationships between the sub-dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness, ıntellect/openness and all imagery sub-dimensions were found. There were significant positive relationships between extraversion sub-dimension and cognitive general imagery, cognitive special imagery, motivational general mastery, motivational special imagery sub-dimensions. There were significant negative relationships between emotional stability sub-dimension and motivational general arousal sub-dimension. As a result imagery and personality traits in athletes associated with each other. Keywords; Imagery; Personality; Sports; Athletes