- Title
- Testing an interactionist perspective on the relationship between personality traits and performance under public pressure
- Creator
- Geukes, Katharina; Mesagno, Christopher; Hanrahan, Stephanie; Kellmann, Michael
- Date
- 2012
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/65592
- Identifier
- vital:4539
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2011.12.004
- Identifier
- ISSN:1469-0292
- Abstract
- Objectives: The interactionist principle of trait activation [. Tett & Gutermann (2000). Situation trait relevance, trait expression, and cross-situational consistency: testing a principle of trait activation. Journal of Research in Personality, 34, 397-423.] explains human behavior through the stimulation of traits by trait-relevant situational cues (i.e., situation-trait relevance). In applied (real-world) high-pressure situations, audiences provide the situational demand of public evaluation. Therefore, traits that are related to public evaluation are appraised as situation-relevant. The purpose of the current study was to test if situation-relevant traits (i.e., narcissism, public self-consciousness) predict performance in applied high-pressure situations, while situation-irrelevant traits (i.e., private self-consciousness) do not contribute to the performance explanation. Design/Method: Experienced handball players (N = 55) completed personality questionnaires and performed a throwing task in low and high-pressure conditions, whereby the high-pressure condition involved 1500-2000 spectators during halftime breaks of professional handball games. Results: Findings supported the assumptions about situation-trait relevancies and indicated that narcissism and public self-consciousness were relevant to high-pressure performance (i.e., positively associated), whereas private self-consciousness was found to be irrelevant. No predictors were correlated to low-pressure performance. Conclusions: Results emphasize that trait activation is a promising explanation for the relevance of personality characteristics to performance under pressure. A systematic consideration of situational demands of high-pressure situations will result in adequate appraisals of situation-trait relevance and help predict performance with trait scores. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
- Relation
- Psychology of Sport and Exercise Vol. 13, no. 3 (2012), p. 243-250
- Rights
- Elsevier Ltd.
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Choking; Narcissism; Person-situation debate; Public evaluation; Self-consciousness; Trait activation
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