The Innovative Research Themes of Sport and Personality:Comment and Prospect

Sport and personality are the traditional topics of the classic issues in sports industry, and there are also the basic research issues in the areas of sport and exercise psychology. Traditionally, the method of mapping knowledge has been used to explore the research issues of sport and personality. The data of the current research was from the database of Web of Science TM including 610 research papers concerning sport and personality. The results indicate that the themes of sport and personality are gradually refined and conceptualized through a long term process. In addition, the topic of the research on mental toughness also becomes an independent variable. Unfortunately, the aforementioned weakness of the theory may hinder its development. In addition, the positive correlation between mental toughness and athlete's coping ability has been found with a general consensus. However, because the current personality topic and its profound impact in sport and exercise psychology practice, it is necessary to further examine the correlation between personality and sport practice. Sensation seeking is the focus of researchers' attention because of its maturity in theory and unique usefulness in sport and exercise psychology. The revealed findings of the current study indicated that the people tend to participate in high risk sports are high in sensation seeking. The relationship between physical exercise and personality has been gradually revealed. The findings of this study indicated that the influence of personality on physical exercise seems to be indirect. There is no solid evidence to explain whether physical exercise can change personality or not. Future research should examine the issues of sport and personality from the perspective of the whole personality, and might examine the correlated variables from the behavioral genetics and neuroscience perspectives, and need to strengthen the intervention of sport and personality.