A relationship between personality and empathy in teenagers' school sports club participation

Abstract

This study aims to identify the relation between students' participation in sports club activities and personality and sympathy based on the findings obtained from personalty and sympathy study and understand what the inter-relational characteristics are. This study investigated a total of 408 individuals (male, 58.3%; female, 41.7%) who have continuously participated in sports club activity in middle schools located at Seoul and Gyeonggi province, Korea. To look at the type of event that they selected, 127 individuals (31.1%) reported that "School sports club event is already defined in school." and 281 (68.9%) reported that "We can select among several school sports club events." The events that they participated in are that 79 individuals participated in basket ball, 47 in line dancing, 96 in badminton, 2 in yoga, 31 in football, 129 in ping-pong, and 20 in floorball. In conclusion adolescence is a period that ad- olescents are physically and mentally developed in terms of personality, morality, creativity, and sociality. During this period, learning and experience are very important for lifetime. Therefore, teenagers school sports club activity can contribute to fostering positive and desirable personality and stabilizing emotional empathy among student participants. This study identified the relation between personality and empathy in adolescents, which was not studied before. As presented in previous researches, it can be found that positive personality can be cultivated by teenagers' communal activities in school life. The link to connect this with empathy factor is considered to be the very communal activity, sports.