Aggression and Perception of Pain among Young Candidates to Professional Soccer Players

Aggression is a constant feature in an athlete’s life. This is because training and too many competitions require a proactive attitude to these demands, hence the importance to distinguish aggression and violence. The same demands that generate aggressiveness also cause pain and injury due to excessive training and competitions. The influences and guidance experienced in the early formation of an athlete’s career are related to other aspects of personality like aggression, perception of pain and effort developed during an athlete’s history and his interaction with the environment. This study evaluated 87 adolescent athletes from the base team of a large professional soccer club in the city of Sao Paulo through the application of psychological assessment tests. The results showed differences among different subgroups of adolescent athletes, as well as differences between these results and normative data described in the manuals of instruments used. When comparing the results from groups of the Brazilian sample of this research with the results of subjects included in the original German manual, the results show much higher average scores in the sporting context.