Mr. Conzelmann, you have spent a long time researching personality development in sport. Does our personality determine which sport we do, or does sport shape who we are?
Both. You need certain personality traits to start a sport. But it also depends on whether you feel good about it. Only then will you stick with it. For example, there are people in whom the sensation-seeking motive is strongly pronounced, who are looking for the extreme. They would be more interested in an offer to climb than a “scaredy-cat”. But maybe they don’t like the people in the group, or the effort is too much and they give up. So many factors go into the decision to take up a sport that it can’t be boiled down to one thing.
