Selected Personality Traits of Women Training Combat Sports

Abstract

Introduction. Contemporary women are more and more independent nowadays and emancipation of women is also visible in sports. The aim of the study was to present certain personality traits of female athletes training selected combat sports. The authors claim that taking up the aforementioned activity is an attempt at overcoming stereotypical attitude to a social role of women. The analysis of results revealed psychological profiles of female athletes. Material and methods. The research included women aged 17 to 36 (N=199). The first group (N=94) consisted of athletes training boxing, judo, wrestling and taekwon-do, the majority of whom had a master sports class. The second group included women not training any sports (N=105). The research was conducted with the use of the following tools: Psychological Gender Inventory, Temperament Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R), Creative Behaviour Questionnaire and personal questionnaire created by the authors. Conclusions. The analysis of the material showed that female athletes training combat sports contest traditional femininity since they have more personality traits traditionally attributed to men (high level of masculinity). High psychoticism of the athletes is also perceived as a tendency to break conventions. As highly non-conformist individuals, they live according to their own system of values training sports which are stereotypically treated as masculine. Combat sports are trained by women with low emotional and sensory reactivity, which gives them advantageous position in sports competition.

Objective and Subjective Assessments of the Psychological Gender of Female Athletes Practicing Martial Arts

“…The literature presents data about the predominance of women with traits of psychological masculinity in martial arts (Burdzicka-Wolowik & Goral-Radziszewska, 2014). In our studies, the majority of female athletes (n=27) are dominated by signs of psychological androgyny.…”

“…Traditionally, most specialists associate various types of martial arts with masculinity, and the participation of female athletes causes some discussion (Kavoura, Kokkonen, Chroni, & Ryba, 2018). There is an opinion about the predominance of psychological masculinity practising different types of martial arts among female athletes (Burdzicka-Wolowik & Goral-Radziszewska, 2014). However, a number of scientists point to the predominance of individuals with the characteristics of the androgynous psychological gender during the self-identification of female athletes practising martial arts (Cardoso et al, 2016).…”

Conforming and nonconforming personality and stress coping styles in combat athletes

“…1.The KANH III (Creative Behaviour Questionnaire III) is a modified by Bernacka version of the original Creative Behaviour Questionnaire KANH by Popek (Burdzicka-Wołowik and Góral-Radziszewska, 2014; Nęcka et al, 2006). This questionnaire comprises 26 statements, all in the form of declarative sentences (Bernacka, 2009a).…”

“…On the other hand, the level of psychoticism was low in wrestlers and medium in ju-jitsu competitors (Litwiniuk et al, 2009). Female athletes training combat sports were found to have a significantly higher level of nonconformism (Burdzicka-Wołowik and Góral-Radziszewska, 2014). …”

Definition of Gender Identity in Younger Age Groups of Women's Boxing

“…Scientist researched studied 60 post-puberty girls in sports: boxing, judo, wrestling, gymnastics, basketball determined the dominance of the androgen type [5,6].…”