Temperamental Predictive Factors for Success in Korean Professional Baseball Players

In this five-year cohort study, we hypothesize that factors of temperament and character in professional baseball players predict the speed of obtaining success and the quality of success as well as anxiety control.

Participants included 120 male rookie players from the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) and 107 male non-players with no history of playing baseball. The personality/characters and state/trait anxieties of participants were assessed with the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and Spielberg's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y (STAI-Y). Over the duration of five years, all the players were subsequently classified into either a success group (major leaguers) or a non-success group (non-major leaguers), depending on their status in the professional baseball league in Korea.

The players in the group of starters had higher novelty seeking (NS) scores than those of non-starters. The reward dependence (RD) scores of the success group were higher than those of the non-success group. The state anxiety scores in the starter group were negatively correlated with NS scores. The state and trait anxieties in the non-success group were positively correlated with RD scores.

The results of this study suggest that predictive temperamental factors for success in baseball players include traits of novelty seeking and reward dependence.