My friend and I were talking about how students get athletic scholarships to get into colleges when he remarked how easy it is for women players to get such scholarships. He claimed that women don’t even have to be that good or work as hard as boys because there isn’t enough competition. I think that it is generally true that fewer women than men participate in organized sports. This I believed was due to the fact that women growing up aren’t placed in situations where they need to engage in playing a sport, or aren’t encouraged as men are. However, Vaughan, Madigan, and Carter claim that a particular personality trait called the Dark Triad might be imperative in being good at a sport. Especifically, they claim: “It is possible that the Dark Triad facilitate successful sport performance by increasing competitiveness.” In this blogpost, I want to explore what the study’s finding might suggest.
The Dark Triad consists of: 1. Narcissism defined by grandiosity, entitlement, and superiority, 2. Machiavellianism defined by manipulation, self-service, and deceit, and 3. Psychopathy defined by impulsive, unempathetic, and anxious individual.
I looked at their study on the presence of the Dark Triad in men versus women, athletes versus non-athletes, and individual players versus group players. The sample they looked at consists of 1,258 participants with an even combination of elite players, amateurs, and non-athletes, men and women, team and individual players. Because the study has a good sample space, and the tests conducted seem to be established in the field of psychology, I thought the study was a thorough and informative. However, the researchers are very careful not to claim any implications from the results, but only report the findings. For instance, they found the participants in the groups men, elite athlete, and individual player scored higher on the Dark Triad than women, non-elite, and group players. The researchers suggest that elite players might have higher confidence and are assertive, hence they score higher. However, no explanation is given for the difference in gender for DT scores. If male athletes have more of the dark factor in their personality, does this indicate that men and women might be inherently different? Or is there a difference in the scores because women athletes don’t have a high self-perception of their sport performance as men do? At one point, the researchers suggest that the difference in scores between men and women might be because of higher levels of testosterone in men, however they never go into why this would affect the DT scores.
One flaw with the study is that they never specify ethnic origin or socio-economic status of the participants, which I think would bring a whole new dimension to the study. The relationships that are established between the DT score of different group might be completely changed if there variables were considered.
Going back to the claim made by the researchers that a higher DT score might be important in a successful sports career, I think it is worthy exploring how a person’s DT score can be increased even though it is a negative personality trait. Additionally, how does the DT score compare with having Carol Dweck’s growth mindset? Is it possible to have a high self-perception of one’s performance, want to do better yourself at the expense of others, and still have a learner’s view of the world? Though I think that the growth mindset measures one’s ability to get back up from a setback, and the Dark Triad is an overall approach to goals and interpersonal relationships, I think it would be interesting to explore how the two co-exist. And maybe that’ll be my next blogpost. 😉
Resource(s):
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 