SPORT INTEREST AS PREDICTED BY THE PERSONALITY MEASURES OF COMPETITIVENESS, MASTERY, INSTRUMENTALITY, EXPRESSIVITY, AND SENSATION SEEKING

The study was designed to examine sport interest in a sample of male a nd female university students in order to determine if the personality measures of competitiveness, instrumentality, expressivity, and sensa tion seeking are predictive of sport interest as well as sport partici pation in a variety of sports. Factor analysis of Franken's WCMP Scale (a scale that contains a variety of questions pertaining to winning, competitiveness, mastery, and persistence) produced three factors that were named: the Motivation for High Performance Scale (MHP), the Moti vation for New Learning Scale (MNL), and the Importance of Winning Sca le (WIN). The emergence of the MHP and WIN as distinct factors was tak en as evidence for the idea that sometimes people seek out competition in order to perform at a high level or observe others perform at a hi gh level while at other times people seek out competition in order to be a winner or observe others as winners. MHP was the best predictor o f sport interest for both males and females although WIN, the Competit iveness Scale of Spence and Helmreich's Work and Family Orientation Qu estionnaire (WOFO), and Instrumentality were also good predictors for certain sports. MNL, the Mastery Scale of the WOFO, and Expressively w ere significant predictors of certain sports interest but mainly in co nnection with female interest in figure skating and gymnastics. Sensat ion seeking was not a predictor of sport interest although certain sub scales of Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale did predict sport intere st in certain instances. Analysis of sex differences indicated that fe male as compared to male participants were significantly more interest ed in gymnastics and figure skating, whereas male as compared to femal e participants were significantly more interested in hockey, football, baseball and basketball, golf, tennis, and boxing. Males obtained hig her scores on all of the personality measures used except expressivity (where females scored significantly higher).