Personality, age and athletic performance in soccer players from the model of Costa and McCrae.

The study of personality in performance is still an important line of research. In the last decade, some confirmatory results have been obtained, though they are not conclusive, with regard to the study of relation between personality, age and performance of athletes. Further conclusive studies are needed. With this intention, the aims pursued in this study are: 1.-To establish possible differences in personality depending on the category of sports age and 2.- To study the relation between personality and sports performance, and establish the capacity Model predictive Five Personality Factors regarding performance. In order to accomplish this, the questionnaire of personality NEO-FFI (Costa and McCrae, 2008) has been applied and the sports performance has been evaluated with a sample of 128 football players aged between 14 and 24. The results indicate that the athletes belonging to the adults' category obtain higher scores in the traits Opening to the Experience and Responsibility than those of the youth and junior categories, while juveniles have a higher trait of neuroticism than adults. In addition, the traits Opening to the Experience and Responsibility relate positively to the sports performance, whereas the trait Neuroticism does it in a negative way. In this case, results in significant regression models (p < .05) with a 5.1% predictive variables entering Neuroticism and Openness to Experience. Regarding age category, only regression models with trend to statistical significance (p < .10) are shown in the cadet category. However, by including the variable age of football players in the regression models, we get significant linear regression models selectively for football players aged 14 and over 18 (p < .05), achieving predictions of 24.3% and 25.6% respectively. The input variables in the regression model for football players aged 14 are Neuroticism and Responsibility, and Neuroticism and Extraversion for football players over 18. This information supports the "hypothesis of selection" and "hypothesis of development" and the "credulous perspective" of the study of the personality on the sports context.