Personality Differences between and within Baseball and Tennis Players

Abstract

Baseball and tennis coaches at Ohio State University ranked their respective players (N = 69) in performance at the end of the 1965 season. The Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, a personality test, had been administered to all players before the season began. Using multiple discriminant analysis, no significant differences in personality profiles were observed between the tennis and baseball groups, or between the highest 20 and lowest 20 ranked baseball players. When making between- and within-athletic group comparisons with normative data on each of 15 personality traits, a few traits, such as Achievement, Intraception, and Dominance, emerged as significant.