| What Makes Rowers Tick? A Personality Profile | | By Brenda G. Boone, Ph.D. and Marianne Emerson, M.S. | | From the 1997 American Rower's Almanac | | | What kind of people choose a sport that requires them to rise before dawn, train outdoors often in cold, wet weather, punish bodies with blisters and strained muscles, travel hundreds of miles to compete, with races lasting only eight minutes, often less than a minute of that in sight of family and friends? What are they like to live with? How do they make decisions? How do they work together in team boats? Are there any common personality traits that rowers share? This is a topic that's fun for casual conversation, but can also be an interesting study. This article seeks to determine whether or not there are common personality traits that rowers share, traits that help explain their willingness and ability to dedicate themselves to such a demanding sport. It also tries to relate these traits to lifestyles, interpersonal interaction, educational attainment and professional success, which, among devotees to rowing, appears to far exceed that of participants in other sports. What is going on? The method chosen here to evaluate rowers' personalities is the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI, based upon research by psychologist Carl Jung in the 1920's, is a popular test that has been used successfully to help individuals work better in groups as well as understand themselves and make better career choices. The MBTI was given to 87 rowers during the summer of 1996, most of them participants in the 16th Annual Charlie Butt Head of the Potomac Regatta. They answered questions like "Are you more likely to trust your (a) experience or (b) hunch?" The answers suggest your MBTI preferences. For a brief sketch of how the MBTI works, see Definitions below. Introvert versus Extrovert is straightforward, but the meanings of the words in the other scales aren't so obvious. Table 1: Definition of Myers-Briggs Preference Choices The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator looks at your preferences on four scales. Each scale represents two opposite preference choices. Male and female averages are the same except with respect to the Thinking versus Feeling categories. The scales are as follows: | | | (E) Extroversion
People who prefer extroversion are energized by the outer world of people and things. National average: 75% (S) Sensing
Prople who prefer sensing tend to learn through concrete Information gained from their five senses. National Average: 75% (T) Thinking
People who prefer thinking tend to base their decisions on logic and objective analysis. National average: 48% (65% of men and 35% of women) (J) Judging
People who prefer judging tend to like closure and make decisions with a minimum amount of stress. National average: 50% | | (I) Introversion
People who prefer introversion are energized by inner thoughts, ideas and impressions. National average: 25%. (N) Intuition
People who prefer intuition tend to learn through thoughts, ideas and impressions. National average: 25%. (F) Feeling
People who prefer feeling tend to decide subjectively in a personal, value-oriented way. National average: 52% (35% of men and 65% of women) (P) Perceiving
People who prefer perceiving tend to prefer to keep their options open and gather more information before making decisions. National average:50% |
Table 2: Myers-Briggs Type Choices of Male and Female Rowers Compared to U.S. Averages | Introvert | Extrovert | Sensing | Intuitive | Thinking | Feeling | Perceiving | Judging | Women | 36% | 64% | 39% | 61% | 73% | 27% | 33% | 67% | Men | 63% | 37% | 52% | 48% | 89% | 11% | 26% | 70% | National Average | 25% | 75% | 75% | 25% | 48% | 52% | 50% | 50% |
What can be learned from the answers of 87 college and elite rowers? If you look at each trait by itself, as summarized in Table 2, you can see results that apply to most of the rowers and three more preferences chosen by a majority of one gender or the other. 73% of the women and 89% of the men are Thinkers, while the national average is 48%. An argument based on logic will be much more appealing to Thinkers than one based on sympathy. Thinkers prefer to link ideas together by making logical connections; they are naturally brief and businesslike. If forced to choose between being truthful and being tactful, they will be truthful. In addition, 67% of the women and 70% of the men are Judgers, while the national average is 50%. Judgers are decisive, self-regimented, seek closure, and thus want to get things done. If this sample is typical, you have a lot of rowers who feel comfortable with principles and objectives (Thinkers) and like having things decided and planned (Judgers). So getting up early every morning to row would fit right in. As Table 2 also shows, lots of rowers in the sample (63% of the mean and 36% of the women) were Introverts, while the average among all Americans is 25%. This would also fit with rowing, since most Introverts are very focused and do their best work inside their heads, in reflection. 61% of the women were intuitive as were half of the men. (The national average is 25%, so both men and women were significantly different from the American norm.) Intuitives have the big picture as their focus; they are by nature initiators and promoters. They need their counterpart, Sensers, to point out pertinent facts, to notice what needs attention now, and to apply experience to problems. The combination of Sensers and Intuitives on a rowing team would be beneficial, because you have both practical, detail-oriented people for short-term goals and people who prefer to speculate and imagine, contributing to the longer-term. Sharing personality traits is both a benefit and a liability. Being similar, fellow rowers can understand each other very well, leading to tight bonds of friendship. At the same time some commonly shared traits may lead to tensions. For example, the high proportion of thinkers among rowers could mean that people's feelings may not be taken into account and that might lead to some dissatisfaction. As another example, the desire to have things planned can make Judgers very impatient and irritable when things are undecided for a long time, such as if travel arrangements to a regatta are up in the air. Tensions could be defused by explaining ahead of time that there will be travel uncertainties due to the need to save costs and other various reasons. Table 3: Percentages of MBTI Types and Female Rowers Compared to U.S. Averages There are some interesting results related to rowers and shown in Table 3, which compares the MBTI types of the rowers by gender to an average of Americans for men and women combined. (As explained in Definitions, an MBTI type consists of one choice from each of the four preference groups. All together there are sixteen types-all possible combinations of two choices and four preferences.) As highlighted below, the highest percentage of women (24%-twice the national norm) has the combination of preferences called the ESTJ type and the highest percentage of male rowers (30%-5 times the national average) turned out be ISTJ. The second highest percentage of women rowers (12%-twice the national average) turned out to be the ENTP and ENTJ types and the second highest percentage (13% - 9 times and twice the national average respectively) of men rowers turned out to be the INTJ and ENTJ types.
| ISTJ | ISFJ | >INFJ | INTJ | Women | 6% | 3% | 6% | 9% | Men | 30% | 4% | 0% | 13% | National Avg | 6% | 6% | 1% | 1% | | | | | | | ISTP | ISFP | INFP | INTP | Women | 0% | 0% | 2% | 9% | Men | 6% | 0% | 4% | 7% | National Avg. | 5% | 5% | 1% | 1% | | | | | | | ESTP | ESFP | ENFP | ENTP | Women | 0% | 3% | 6% | 12% | Men | 4% | 0% | 2% | 7% | National Avg. | 13% | 13% | 5% | 5% | | | | | | | ESTJ | ESFJ | ENFJ | ENTJ | Women | 24% | 3% | 3% | 12% | Men | 9% | 0% | 2% | 13% | National Avg. | 13% | 13% | 5% | 5% |
Percentages do not add to 100% due to rounding. Highlighted cells are explained above. The MBTI has a lot to say about the different personality characteristics of each of the sixteen types and this is the focus of much of the individual and group learning that uses the MBTI. Each personality type has a unique set of characteristics, so it is interesting to briefly describe the types that made up the largest percentages of the sample: ISTJ's tend to be thorough, decisive, practical, and very dependable. They like matters stated clearly. They are usually quiet and realistic and choose careers like auditing, finance, civil engineering, and health care fields. ESTJ's tend to be friendly, detail-oriented, and very responsible. They organize well and follow through to get things done. They tend to focus on the job instead of the people behind the job; they have little patience with confusion or inefficiency. Many of them choose management careers in diverse fields, from banking to manufacturing. ENTJ's tend to be logical, analytical, and not likely to be convinced by anything but reasoning. They tend to focus on the ideas instead of the people behind the ideas. They enjoy seeing the possibilities beyond what is present, obvious, or known and look for intellectual challenges. Because their focus is the big picture, they may overlook certain details. They tend to move into management, starting out as attorneys, analysts, or in sales or marketing ENTP's tend to be ingenious innovators who always see new possibilities and new ways of doing things. They like occupations with new challenges and may be scientists, journalists, troubleshooters, marketers, or computer analysts. INTJ's are also strong innovators, in thought as well as in action. They are the most independent of all of the sixteen types and will drive others almost as hard as they drive themselves. They often use their intuitive insights in fields such as science, engineering, politics, or philosophy.
The MBTI can be used extensively for analysis, but for the purpose of this article we don't want to do that. Our point is simply that rowing is a sport that makes unusual demands upon its participants, and the characteristics that enable one to meet these demands have broader and interesting applications in life. There is also the issue of putting team rowers into the right personality combinations, and understanding how to treat one another after teams are formed. MBTI has lots to tell us, if we care to listen. * * * * * * |
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