The Independent and Interactive Effects of the Big Five Personality Dimensions upon Dispositional Coping and Coping Effectiveness in Sport

We examined the independent and interactive effects of the Big-Five personality traits on dispositional coping and coping effectiveness among athletes. Participants were 400 athletes (mean age 22.97, s = 7.00) from the United Kingdom. The athletes completed measures of personality, dispositional coping, and coping effectiveness. The Big-Five personality traits independently predicted the use of higher-order coping dimensions. Extraversion, agreeableness, and openness positively predicted task-oriented coping. Neuroticism positively predicted distraction-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Both extraversion and neuroticism positively predicted disengagement-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Only neuroticism predicted coping effectiveness, which emerged as a negative predictor. Findings also showed a two-way interaction effect for predicting task-oriented coping between neuroticism and openness, and between extraversion and neuroticism. A further two-way interaction effect for predicting distraction oriented coping was found between agreeableness and conscientiousness. These findings reinforce the need to investigate not only independent, but also interactive effects of personality dimensions upon sport-related dispositional coping