Autotelic personality as a predictor of engagement in sports

Study aim: The aim of the study was to empirically evaluate the structure of autotelic personality of athletes in the context of engagement under competitive conditions. Material and methods: The study examined fifty athletes (volleyball players, basketball players, track and field athletes, rugby players and mountain bikers) following competitive events. The methodologies used included NEO-FFI Personality Inventory by Costa and McCrae to determine the level of personality traits and Flow Questionnaire (Csikszentmihalyi) to measure the level of subjective feeling of the state of engagement.

Results: Other significant relationships (p < 0.001) between the personality traits of athletes and the feeling of the state of engagement during competition (positive correlations of consciousness with concentration of attention on current tasks, with autotelic experiences and with transformation of the sense of time; negative correlations between neuroticism/ extroversion with unequivocal understanding of information).

Conclusions: Personality traits and feeling of the state of engagement during sports competitions determine the structure of autotelic personality of athletes, which is a predicator of engagement in sport.