Foresee the glory and train better: Narcissism, goal-setting, and athlete training

Shuge Zhang, Ross Roberts, Tim Woodman, Amanda Pitkethly, Cedric English, David Nightingale
2021 Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology  
1 Grandiose narcissism may be debilitative to athlete training because the opportunity 2 for self-enhancement that motivates narcissists to strive is normally absent in training 3 environments. However, this view ignores the divergent influences of the self-inflated 4 (reflecting over-confidence) and dominant (reflecting willingness for dominance) facets of 5 grandiose narcissism. We expected that self-inflated narcissism would undermine athlete 6 training, but only when dominant narcissism was
more » ... low. This is because dominant narcissism 7 may serve as the catalyst that drives those with self-inflated narcissism to train well. We 8 further considered goal-setting as a practical means of alleviating the negative influence of 9 self-inflated narcissism in training. Goal-setting provides athletes with an exciting vision of 10 the future and thus can be an important self-enhancement strategy to engage narcissistic 11 athletes in training. In the present study, 321 athletes completed the Narcissistic Personality 12 Inventory (NPI-40) and the goal-setting subscale in the Test of Performance Strategies-3 13 (TOPS-3). Coaches of these athletes assessed training behaviors using the Quality of Training 14 Inventory (QTI). Self-inflated narcissism predicted higher levels of (coach-rated) 15 distractibility and poorer quality of preparation only when both dominant narcissism and 16 goal-setting were low (and not when either was high). The findings suggest that dominant 17 narcissism and goal-setting protect against the adverse influences of self-inflated narcissism 18 on athlete training. The work underscores the importance of considering grandiose narcissism 19 as a multidimensional construct and supports goal-setting as a useful self-enhancement 20 strategy. 21 Keywords: self-inflated narcissism, dominant narcissism, goal-setting, self-22 enhancement, training behaviors 23 NARCISSISM, GOAL-SETTING, TRAINING 2 Foresee the glory and train better: Narcissism, goal-setting and athlete training 24 High-quality training is essential to achieve peak performance (Hardy et al., 2017). 25 Research has examined factors that might influence the quality of training, with several 26 studies showing that personality is related to how well an athlete trains. For example, work 27 using the Big Five model of personality has shown conscientiousness to positively influence 28 the quality of preparation in training, whereas extraversion and neuroticism contribute to 29 increased distractibility and impaired coping with adversity in training settings (Woodman, 30
doi:10.1037/spy0000264 fatcat:orrzyxaiwveetcgxysujczsxy4