Abstract
Personality research among athletes seems to have obtained less interest in recent
years after much focus until the 1990s. This decline was obviously a result of ill conducted
“personology” research, and a greater focus on psychological state versus trait in the sport
psychology community. The present study explored personality dimensions, as measured by
the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory, passion, self-esteem, and well-being among
junior elite athletes. In addition, the athletes were compared with non-athletic peers to
investigate if they had a personality profile which appears to be more beneficial for athletes.
Female athletes scored significantly higher on the personality dimensions Reward
Dependence and Cooperativeness, and significantly lower on Self-esteem than their male
counterparts. Both obsessive and harmonious passion was found to be more pronounced
among those competing at an international level as compared with athletes competing at a
local level. In addition, the athlete sample scored significantly higher on Persistence and SelfDirectedness
and lower on Harm Avoidance than non-athletes. The use of the J-TCI as a
measure of personality yielded interesting results, which should be relevant for the sport
psychology community and increase our understanding of the underlying factors and
mechanisms of elite sport. In future research, the predictive power of personality on especially
performance in different sports should be investigated.