Diverging associations of dimensions of competitiveness with gender and personality

Abstract More attention must be paid to the multidimensional nature of competitiveness to better understand how competitiveness relates to personality and gender. We focus on three dimensions: Desire to Win (DW), Personal Development competitiveness (PD), and Enjoyment of Competition (EC). Our empirical exploratory analysis is based on a large sample of 1520 individuals. We control for interdimensional correlations, correct for multiple testing, and use conservative thresholds to provide robust evidence on dimension-specific associations of competitiveness with personality, operationalized via the HEXACO framework, and gender. Independent of the respectively other competitiveness dimensions, DW relates to less honesty-humility and less agreeableness, PD to more emotionality, and EC to more extraversion and less emotionality. EC is the sole source of gender differences among the correlated competitiveness dimensions.