Brawn and Brains: An Exploration of Personality Differences Between Strength Sports Athletes

Abstract

Strength sports like bodybuilding, powerlifting, weightlifting, strongman/strongwoman, and CrossFit® all revolve around resistance training but differ in the way they are trained for, performed, and judged. While personality is known to influence physical activity choices, little is known about whether different strength sports attract athletes with distinct personality profiles. This study explored whether personality dimensions and their more specific facets differ between athletes from these five strength disciplines. A total of 187 competitive strength sport athletes (73.8% male, 26.2% female) completed the IPIP-NEO-120 personality inventory. One-way ANCOVAs were used to examine differences across sports, with sex controlled as a covariate. Results showed that while the only significant difference at the dimension level was for neuroticism (ηp² = .076), with CrossFit® athletes scoring lowest, several meaningful differences emerged at the facet level. Bodybuilders scored higher in artistic interest, orderliness, and cautiousness, while strongman/strongwoman athletes scored higher in immoderation and vulnerability, and lower in cautiousness. Weightlifters demonstrated the highest liberalism scores, and CrossFit® athletes showed the lowest vulnerability. Effect sizes for facet-level differences ranged from small to medium (ηp² = .051 to .074). These findings suggest that although athletes may appear similar when grouped under the umbrella of strength sports, there are meaningful psychological differences between disciplines. These insights may help explain sport selection and could inform future research on how personality interacts with training over time.