Date of Award

4-1-1982

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. William E. Walker

Abstract

Research in the area of sport psychology has grown tremendously over the past twenty years. One area, in particular, that has been researched a great deal is the idea of the typical athletic personality. (Fletcher and Dowell, 1971; Foster, 1977; Morgan and Johnson, 1978; and Morris, Vaccaro and Clarke, 1979 are examples.) Does the personality of the athlete differ from that of the non-athlete? Of particular concern are the areas of personality dealing with locus control and self-esteem. Locus of control is distributed along the internal/external dimension. Internal control was defined by Rotter, Livenant and Seeman (1962) as the perception that positive or negative events are a consequence of one's own actions, while external control points to consequences of actions other than one's own. Self-esteem refers to one's views of self and is generally said to range from favorable (good self-concept) to unfavorable (bad self-concept). The particular question concerning these personality measures asks whether or not an athlete's locus of control and self-esteem measures differ significantly from a non-athlete.

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