Summary:
In recent years, the stress factor has appeared in every aspects of human life. One of them is sports as stress seems to affect the stay of athletes on the field as well as their performance at the competitive level. The theoretical framework of the present study is based on the theory of personality, self-determination and the theory of stress. The aim is to examine the relationship between stress and athletes' personality and motivation as well as the impact of gender and experience times on these factors. One hundred and four athletes (104) took part in this research who aged thirteen (13) to thirty-four (34) (M = 17.88, SD = 5.48) and had a competitive experience of one (1) to eighteen (18) years (M = 6.36, SD = 3.57).The questionnaires used for this aim were: 1) Five Factor Personality Questionnaire (Costa & McCrae, 1992), 2) Motivation Scale in Sports (Pelletier et al., 2012), 3) Competitive Questionnaire 2 (Smith et al., 2006). The results reported that the more extrovert athletes appear to have higher degree of motivation and the neuroticism factor showed positive correlations with the external motivations of athletes.Furthermore, statistically significant differences appeared between athletes of different experience in personality traits. In conclusion, it seems that the personality of athletes is related and differentiated by other critical emotional factors such as degree of motivation and level of competitive stress. This element should be taken into account by coaches and sports psychologists in order to increase motivation and improve the performance of athletes.
