Professional deformation predictors of personality in sports

Every day typical tasks solving (training, competitions) improves the mechanisms of mental reflection, forms habits, thinking and communication style of the athlete. These positive changes are described by the phenomenon of personal growth. At the same time, sport also has a deforming effect, because it has the most complex structure of activity, due to the fact that a person acts both as an object and as a subject of influence. The purpose of the work was to determine probable external and internal predictors of professional deformation of the personality in sport. The psychological phenomenon of professional deformation in work is regarded as a process that begins with the disharmonization of the athlete's personal meaning system and, as a consequence, leads to narrowing the range of his adaptive capacity to variations in the social environment. In the interest of finding probable predictors of professional deformation of personality in sports, various cognitive formations were analyzed, that are formed during the process of long and systematic sportsmanship. Such cognitive formations include: personalization, dichotomous thinking, arbitrary reasoning, generalization.The analysis of sports activities allowed distinguishing such specific features as the rigid regulation of the athlete's life, high level of external control, narrowing of the circle of social contacts. Identified features can at the same time act as organizational predictors of professional personality deformation in sports. It is shown that such individual-psychological features as: egocentrism, ambition, authoritarianism, desire to dominate at any cost, need to prevail over others and public approval of their behavior, dominance, pedantry, aggressiveness can be predictors of professional personality deformity.