The current and future leaders of the world are the ones who played team sports in high school.
“Participation in competitive youth sports ‘spills over’ to occupationally advantageous traits that persist across a person’s life,” said Kevin M. Kniffin, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and lead researcher.
Kniffin’s research shows that people who played a varsity high school sport are thought to be more self-confident, have more self-respect, and exhibit more leadership than those who participated in other extracurricular activities. The research also found that varsity athletes exhibited higher pro-social volunteerism and charitable activities.
“In our study of late-career workers, those who earned a varsity letter more than 50 years ago do demonstrate these characteristics more than others—plus, they donate time and money more frequently than others and possessed great prosocial behavior in their 70s, 80s, and 90s,” Kniffin said.
Well, now that that’s on the table, let’s take a poll.
(photo credit: K.M. Klemencic via photopin cc)
