Does an athlete’s anger differ by sport type and gender?

Anger is an emotion that is frequently associated with a bad reputation. Anger has proven to play an effective role in certain athletic achievements; however, it is unknown which sport and gender have the athletes whose performance is most influenced by anger. In this study, we administered the STAXI-2 to determine relationships between gender and levels of athlete anger in 156 British athletes across a range of contact and non-contact sports and competitive levels (from professional/Olympians to recreational). We investigated differences in levels of anger in relation to the sport they played. Although not statistically significant, the results indicated that male athletes scored higher in trait, expression-out, anger control-out, and overall anger index, but females scored higher in state anger. The findings revealed that athletes in contact sports have higher levels of trait anger, but non contact athletes have higher levels of state anger. This study’s findings imply that anger does not influence all athletes similarly because anger is subjective to persons and sports.