Many psychologists define personality as characterized by the way someone thinks, behaves, and feels when exposed to various environments. Personality allows an individual to embrace attitudes, moods, and opinions, mostly seen during one's interactions with others. It involves behavioral traits inherited or acquired that guide in distinguishing one person from the other depending on how they behave when exposed to different environments (Schultz & Schultz, 2017) . However, personality has attracted many definitions that present logical explanations, but two main explanations still hold in a psychological context. The first one focuses on the differences between individuals and tries to classify and explain relatively stable human characteristics. The second one dwells on those traits that make all people alike and distinguishes the other species from the psychological human being.
However, one may credit the origins of the study of personality on the idea that people can be differentiated by the distinctive ways of doing things such as thinking, talking, walking, and even how they express themselves (Cervone & Pervin, 2015) . However, various psychologists have studied the influences of individuals’ personalities and have developed explanations on the same. From his psychodynamic theory, Sigmund Freud argues that human personality that is seen through their behaviors results from interactivity among various mind components. Sigmund argues that a prominent personality develops due to the psychosexual activities during the developmental stages that become rooted in the unconscious minds and dictates how some behave (Westen, Gabbard, & Ortigo, 2008) . Most of these psychosexual activities trace way back to someone's childhood, and sometimes one may not remember a specific incidence. However, the sub-conscious mind remembers those tiny details and influences how someone responds to some stimuli, and from the outside world, people term that as personality.
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Neo-Freudian theorists expanded on the Sigmund theory and focused more on social environments' influence on personality development. From the early engage people become exposed to different cultures and environments that make significant impacts on people's personality. For example, a child who has grown up in more reserved communities will tend to grow and become introverted compared to a child raised in a more outgoing community. However, personality plays a significant role when it comes to self-motivation and activities someone chooses to engage in. such can be seen in some sports performances such as athletics. Additionally, social environment can influence someone's personality. As sportspeople continue to spend more time in sport, their personality traits tend to change (Allen et al., 2011). The emergence of the "New BIG Five" has addressed these aspects of personality. The latest big fives include an individual's unique characteristics, dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, integrative life stories, and the individual culture.
As described above, personality defines someone's character and behavior when faced with different situations that uniquely identify them. Such is because every individual has some traits that are relatively stable and unchanging. Such traits are used to identify elite sports performers, such as athletes who are believed to have robust sports personalities. These personalities include the ability to practice hard, focus on their performance, and cope well with physical and mental obstacles. Such a personality can be sported very early in a child depending on how they conduct themselves (Allen et al., 2013). However, sports couches have mastered identifying various sportspeople's abilities using their personality, especially in very competitive sports such as soccer. Individuals who are calm and composed will be given striking positions due to the sensitive actions needed to be executed during scoring. In contrast, aggressive individuals will tend to be given a defender position due to their complex ability on the opponent team.
However, environmental exposure can also influence someone's personality, and this still applies to various sportspeople. Although many elite sports performers view to have a robust sports personality, their personality traits differ from one sport to another and the length of time they have been playing. Individuals who play team sports are less abstract in thinking, contain less ego strength, and are more dependent. In contrast, those who play individual sports show a higher level of objectivity and are more abstracting in thinking and less dependent. To extend this argument, one may compare the female athletes and the female non-athletes. Although both at the beginning may pose the same personality traits, as time goes by, the female athletes become more goal-oriented, emotionally stable, more assertive and aggressive, and independent. When comparing young athletes with the elites, one will spot a gap in their personality traits. The elite performers are quite withdrawn and choose activities that are essential to them. They tend to preserve their energies for more competitive sports. The young athletes the seen to be open and excited by every competing task that comes their way. Their motivations are more intrinsic rather than extrinsic. However, as they continue interacting in the athletics arena, their personality starts evolving, and they start leaning forward on the elite member personality.
In conclusion, personality is the unique behavioral identifier that distinguishes one person from another. Over the years, many explanations have been developed to explain personality theory and how it relates to human behavior. However, Sigmund explanations carry more weight since it explains human interactions and the unconscious mind and how they are used to shape peoples' personality. Sigmund's work was expanded and incorporated personality in sports and how sports shape one's personality. Therefore, even though the concept of personality is complex, one cannot fail to recognize its impact in a human interactive environment especially sports.
References
Allen, M. S., Greenlees, I., & Jones, M. (2011, April 14). An investigation of the five-factor model of personality and coping behavior in sport. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29 (8), 841-850. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2011.565064
Allen, M. S., Greenlees, I., & Jones, M. (2013, March 11, March 11). Personality in sport: a comprehensive review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6 (1), 184-208. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2013.769614
Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and Research. Wiley Publishing school.
Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2017). Theory of personality (eleven ed.). Engage.
Westen, D., Gabbard, G., & Ortigo, K. (2008). Sigmund: Psychoanalytic approaches to personality. In Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 61-113). The Guilford Press.
