INFLUENCES OF GENETIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY, PERFORMANCE AND SPORTS ACHIEVEMENT

The development of personality, sports performance and sports achievement is a result of dynamic interactions between genetic and environmental factors during an athlete's career. Actual changes in athletic abilities and skills require promoting environmental contexts that, if such, in turn enable expression of the entirety of person's genetic potential and comprehensive personality development. Therefore, behavioural geneticists and sport scientists/kinesiologists have, over the last two decades, directed their research focus to a better understanding of concepts of interaction and correlation between genotype and environment. The analysis of the interactions and associations between genotype and environment provides a much deeper insight into the functioning of athlete's personality and his/her performance. Research findings suggest that athletes develop their personality, performance and sports achievements under the influence of environmental factors, especially during their childhood and adolescence. In a perennial process of sports preparation, it is necessary to treat athletes of different genetic profiles with adequate specific training programmes that can improve their basic and sport-specific characteristics up to the level of elite, consistent and effective performance within a competition context. Apparently, differences in genetic constitution as well as in exposure to environmental factors are responsible for the formation of athletes' personality traits and for the improvements in performance efficiency and sports achievements. Findings also indicate that the modifications in genotype and personality traits expression are under the influence of huge numbers of environmental factors. Apparently, exposure to a perennial systematic training may facilitate gene expression, whereas, on the other hand, the exposure to an unsystematic training may supress it. Literature from the fields of psychology and kinesiology suggests that training, competition, recovery and lifestyle may be analysed as factors having influence on the actual changes in basic and sports-specific characteristics of athletes, which manifest themselves as progress in performance and achievements. Therefore, the development of personality, performance and achievements are understood by psychologists and kinesiologists as a complementary process embracing a balanced approach to stimulating physical, cognitive, emotional and social development of athletes.