Pick your battles: Elite ski-jumpers’ motives affect world cup performance depending on competition type

According to motive disposition theory, athletes high in affiliation motivation should find team contexts more rewarding than individual contexts, and hence perform better in team than in individual competitions. The opposite is predicted for athletes high in power motivation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to test these hypotheses in an elite sample (here: ski jumping athletes) based on archived worldcup competition data from both individual and team competitions on the one hand, and self-reported and projectively assessed motives on the other hand. Results confirmed that even at the highest levels of professional sports, individual differences in motives show systematic relationships to competition performance. First, the negative impact of athletes' projectively assessed affiliation motive in individual competitions was significantly attenuated in team competitions, indicating that these represent more favorable conditions for athletes high in affiliation. Second, the projectively assessed power motive exhibited an overall negative relationship to performance. In contrast, self-reported achievement and affiliation motives showed a positive relationship to performance. These findings attest to the role of personality differences in predicting motor performance variability in elite sports.