The Dark Tetrad Personality Traits and Communication Skills: A Study on Physical Education Teachers

Aim: This study aims to examine the relationship between physical education teachers’ dark tetrad personality traids (machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopath and sadism) and their coaching communication skills. Method: The study was conducted with 245 physical education teachers, consisting of 126 female and 119 men, with an average age of 23.4 years. Additionally, dark tetrad personality traids and communication skills were compared based on variables such as marital status, gender, years of experience, years of sports participation and type of sport branch. The research data were found to follow a normal distribution and a one-way analysis of varience (ANOVA) was applied for variable comparisons. Results: The findings indicate that physical education teachers generally exhibit moderate levels of dark tetrad personality traits while possessing high levels of communication skills. No significant differences were observed between dark tetrad traids and communication skills based on demographic variables such as gender, marital status and type of sports branch. However, in the psychopathy sub-dimension, married teachers scored higher than unmarried teachers and male teachers had higher psychopathy levels and communication skills, indicating that as psychopathy levels decrease, communication skills improve. At the same time, a significant difference was found between the variables of years of professional experience and years of sports and the psychopathy sub-dimension in favor of those with lower levels of sports and professional experience. Conclusion: These findings provide an important foundation for understanding how dark tetrad personality traits influence effective communication with athletes.