THE ROLE OF GENDER IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NARCISSISM AND PERFECTIONISM IN HUNGARIAN PHYSICAL EDUCATION STUDENTS

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Literature indicates a strong relationship between narcissism and perfectionism, however, there is little information about this relationship in sports, and even less regarding the way gender affects this relationship. Our paper aims to answer the following questions, in a sample of 202 Hungarian physical education students: (i) are there gender differences in narcissism and perfectionism and how large are these differences?, (ii) how strong is the relationship between narcissism and perfectionism?, (iii) does this relationship vary as a function of perfectionism's components?, and (iv) are there any gender differences in the relationship between narcissism and perfectionism? Our results indicate that the male participants attained significantly higher levels of narcissism than the female participants. Furthermore, we found no significant gender differences in any of the three components of perfectionism a low to moderate association between narcissism and Self-oriented perfectionism and Other-oriented perfectionism, while on the entire sample, narcissism did not correlate with Socially-prescribed perfectionism. Analyzing this relationship separately in the two genders, our investigation indicates a moderate association between narcissism and all the three components of perfectionism only in the case of male participants, these relationships being non-significant for the female participants. These findings indicate that narcissism, in this specific population, is just one of the predictors of perfectionism (and maybe not even the most relevant one). We propose that future studies should focus on exploring other predictive factors of perfectionisms.

Keywords

• narcissism
• perfectionism
• gender
• sports