Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1990, 71, 487-497. O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1990 FACTOR ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERSONALITY AND MOTOR CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN AND WOMEN ' S. RAVIV, E. GERON, AND M. LOW The Zinman College of Physical Education at the Wingate Institute, Israel Summary.-To identify possible relationships among 16 motor and 11 personality variables, 152 women and 77 men, ages 22 to 30 yr., were tested, using factor analysis with varimax rotation. The hypotheses were that (1) specific personality characteristics are related to specific motor characteristics, (2) motor and personality characteristics are clustered in a common structure, (3) sex differences exist in the relations between personality and motor performance. Analyses confumed Hypotheses 1 and 3. Only two of the 11 tested personality variables (Extraversion and abllity to delay gratifica- tion) were related to some of the motor variables, Reaction time, Balance, and Kinesthesis. These relations as well as the factorial structure differed for men and women. As the personality and motor variables were not clustered in common factorial pattern for both sexes, Hypothesis 2 was rejected. The relationship between personality and motor performance has long been the object of many studies. The direct analysis of the relationship between the personality trait of anxiety and several motor variables (reaction time, balance, pursuit rotor variables, and others) has often resulted in nega- tive or conflicting outcomes (Martens, 1971, 1974). Most recent authors are convinced that this is due to the very complicated character of this relation- ship (Carron, 1971; Gill, 1986; Kane, 1982). Some authors stressed the possibility that these relations depend on the type of the motor task per- formed (Weinberg & Genuchi, 1980); others emphasized the role of the specific character of the personality traits (Endler, 1977), of the performance strategy that the subject used (Frith, 1971; Brebner & Flavel, 1978), and of test conditions (Robinson & Zahn, 1988). Relatively little attention has been paid to the effect and meaning of the variables chosen for testing. The per- formance of different motor tasks has been tested almost exclusively by measuring errors or speed. Personality variables investigated were mainly Anxie- ty or Extraversion, measured only by their global scores. The basic assumption of the present study was that the relationship between personality and motor performance may involve other motor vari- ables and different personality traits than those investigated to date, or their components. This was the reason for choosing an analytical approach to par- ticular components of motor performance and personality: not only accuracy and speed of the motor performance, but also direction, variability and 'Address correspondence to S. Raviv, Ph.D., Head, Psychomotor Behavior Department, The Zinman College of Physical Education at the Wingate Institute, Israel 42902.