The Effects of Sensation Seeking, Impulsivity, and the Big Five Factors of Personality on Extreme Sport Engagement and Injury Megan M. Gardner, Shane D. Kentopp, M.S., Bradley T. Conner, PhD [email protected]
Introduction • Extreme sport participation and injury rates have grown exponentially in recent decades (1). • Extreme sport participation and injury have generally shown a positive relation with sensation seeking and impulsivity (2, 4), while some complexities in these relations have been shown to exist as well (3, 5). • Research has established these relations in isolated sports, with a focus on skiing, snowboarding, and rock climbing (2, 6). • Research has shown that, in general, extraversion and openness to experience are significantly positively predictive of extreme sport participation, while conscientiousness may be significantly negatively associated with extreme sport injury (7). • No studies to date have investigated impulsivity, sensation seeking, and the Big Five factors of personality as separate predictors of both extreme sport participation and injury, and no studies to date have attempted to investigate the differential relation of these personality constructs on participation and injury in extreme sport. • The current study seeks to investigate the relation between these personality constructs and their ability to predict extreme sport-related outcomes, with the hope of informing targeted prevention and intervention efforts.
Methods • Cross-sectional survey responses from 5,405 college students at CSU (Mage = 19.68, SD = 2.31). • Survey included the Sensation Seeking Personality Type Scale, the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, Big Five Inventory, and Extreme Sports Risky Behavior Inventory (15 extreme sports). • Structural Equation Modeling was used to assess relations between a latent impulsivity variable, sub-constructs of sensation seeking (experience seeking and risk seeking), the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), and count extreme sport participation and injury variables. o The extreme sport participation variable is defined as a count of how many of 15 total sports an individual participated in at least 1 time; the extreme sport injury variable is defined as the count of the number of sports out of 15 in which at least one injury was sustained. o Model 1: It was predicted that impulsivity is significantly positively predictive of both extreme sport participation and injury o Model 2: It was predicted that both risk seeking and experience seeking are positively predictive of both extreme sport participation and injury o Model 3: It was predicted that openness and extraversion are both positively predictive of extreme sport participation and injury, and that conscientiousness is negatively predictive of injury o Model 4 (full model): It was predicted that experience seeking and risk seeking would emerge as positive predictors of participation while impulsivity would emerge as a positive predictor of injury
Results
Model 1. Impulsivity significantly positively predicts both extreme sport participation and extreme sport injury.
Model 2. Experience seeking significantly positively predicts extreme sport participation. Risk seeking significantly positively predicts extreme sport participation and extreme sport injury.
Model 3. Extraversion and openness significantly positively predict extreme sport participation and extreme sport injury. Conscientiousness significantly negatively predicts extreme sport injury.
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Model 4. Risk seeking emerged as the salient significant positive predictor of both extreme sport participation and extreme sport injury.
Discussion • Impulsivity and sub-constructs of sensation seeking have differential effects on extreme sport outcomes. • Future work should focus on continuing to differentiate effects of impulsivity and sensation seeking on various outcomes utilizing a wide range of impulsivity measures (e.g. Barratt Impulsiveness Scale). • Future work should focus on more specific extreme sport-related outcomes (e.g. hospitalizations, severity of injury, frequency of participation in each sport).
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