Marrakesh — June 21, All of these factors contribute to the levels of team cohesion, and high levels of team cohesion could help a team perform at its best. Bruner, Mark A. Eys, Kathleen S.
Wilson, and Jean C t from the sport, Just on this one team these various subgroups developed and were affecting the potential team cohesion, These are issues that many coaches must face When attempting to ensure team cohesion.
All articles, products, and programs are copyrighted to their respective owners, authors, or Mental Edge Athletics. Furthermore, sport psychology practitioners working with the U. Paralympic program have long advocated for the implementation of workshops devoted to the importance of developing team cohesion among Paralympic athletes Moffett et al. Team Cohesion The development of an instrument to assess cohesion in sport teams: The Group Environment Questionnaire.
Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 7 3 For real understanding of sport psychology, it is necessary to have a reasonable understanding of the nature of psychology itself. One of the things I have tried to do in this second edition is to put across to those new to studying psychology at this level the nature of the disci To Sport Psychology Index. Cohesion by Karlene Sugarman Pick, M. There are many group dynamics that take place within a sporting team.
One of the most important is cohesion. The way Social cohesion: this reflects the emotional side of cohesion, which is how much the players like their team-mates and how much pleasure and pride they take in the group. A secondary aim was to determine statistically the consistency i. Teams are proving vital to organization success for several reasons. The participants were professional sports players in the city of Belgrade, Serbia.
All the analyses were carried out with the SPSS 22 statistical software. Overall, perception of task cohesion is higher than perception of social cohesion. The study also reveals that the type of sport played impacts the level of cohesion, with basketball players having the highest scores of all. Cohesion can emerge from two distinct groups of factors: social cohesion based on social bonds and relationships between the team members and task cohesion based on the joint responsibility of accomplishing the team's tasks.
Additionally, it develops on two levels: the personal perception of individual attraction to the group , and group perception about the group as an entity. With these subgroups of cohesion in mind, Carron, Widmeyer, and Brawley created the Group Environment Questionnaire GEQ , today commonly used to determine perceptions of cohesion amongst adults. Carron claims that, in sports settings, task cohesion to what degree the players are committed to and focus on a common task affects performance more strongly than social cohesion a degree to which members of a team like the other players, and how much pleasure and pride they take in the group.
A meta-analysis of 17 studies by Filho, Dobersek, Gershgoren, Becker, and Tenenbaum showed a stronger link between task cohesion and performance than between social cohesion and performance. Moreover, Dunlop, Falk, and Beauchamp discovered that perception of task cohesion remains relatively stable across several exercise sessions, while perception of social cohesion varies over time. The research by Haddera also suggests that task cohesion is especially important in increasing team performance in sports teams.
Some authors claim there is a connection between interdependence and cohesion in sports Cockerill, ; Cotterill, ; Murray, The author found that even the smallest changes in interdependence can influence the need for team cohesion, and consequently can impact team performance. According to Cotterill , sports that need more cooperation will also need a higher level of cohesion.
The more players need others for success, the higher the level of task cohesion will be. In other words, cohesion helps performance in all sports, but much more so in sports where there is a high need for coordination and cooperation. Fry, Kerr, and Lee contrasted highly interdependent sports, such as football, basketball, ice hockey, and volleyball, and low interdependence sports, such as golf, tennis, wrestling, swimming, and track. Keidel differentiated between pooled interdependence each member acts relatively independently, with sporadic interaction with other members, like in baseball ; sequential interdependence, where members interact in series, like in football teams American football , and reciprocal interdependence, where every member interacts with all other members, like in basketball teams.
Andersen emphasized basketball, water polo, and volleyball as interactive sports. For these authors, cohesion is a common social field, where the aim of increasing team performance comes through learning about each other. In this sense, not all teams benefit from higher social cohesion. It will be only the teams who make real-time decisions during games, where players participate in strategy creation together with their coach, with high coordination requirements.
In a meta-analysis spanning over ten years and comprising 17 studies on cohesion and performance, Filho and associates found their stronger positive correlation for players in coactive sports than in interactive sports.
Regarding sport types, these studies focused either on coactive or interactive sports in general. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the level of cohesion in highly interdependent sports teams, and then compare social and task cohesion.
Regarding their age, the participants were classified into the following groups: years Design and procedure The members of each team completed the questionnaire before training. All procedures took place at the sporting grounds of each team.
Each athlete read and completed the questionnaire on their own. The data were collected from September to March This questionnaire, created by Carron et al. It splits cohesion into two subgroups: group integration and individual attractions to the group.
They are later subdivided into task and social matters, making up four final dimensions. The GEQ has so far shown good psychometric characteristics in several different languages.
Their research proved this version of the GEQ with twelve items to be valid and reliable. The original version of this questionnaire was translated into Serbian by a researcher with degrees in both English language and Management. Based on recommendations from two researchers from the field of psychology, instead of a 9-point Likert scale, a 5-point Likert scale was used, as is usually done in Serbia. Namely, people in that country are used to a five-point grading scale throughout elementary and secondary education, where 5 is always excellent, 2 is the lowest passing grade, and 1 means fail.
The data show moderately high levels of all dimensions of cohesion higher than 4. The data in Table 3 show different means for different sports for each of the dimensions of cohesion. Different letters of the alphabet a,b,c represent a statistically significant difference between variables in the same row; M-Mean; SD — standard deviation. In all cases, higher scores indicate perceptions of higher cohesiveness.
A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare levels of social and task cohesion. The IATG-S mean scores in table 3 show that the level of this dimension of cohesion is highest in basketball teams and lowest in water polo teams. The results of the post-hoc Duncan test indicate that there are significant differences in the mean scores of IATG-S between water polo and two other sports volleyball and basketball , while basketball is significantly different from handball.
The IATG-T mean scores in table 3 show that this cohesion dimension is highest in basketball teams and lowest in water polo teams. The Duncan test also shows significantly different mean scores between basketball teams and all others. The GI-S mean scores in table 3 also show significant differences between sports. This dimension of cohesion is highest in basketball teams and lowest in football teams. Again, the data from the post hoc Duncan test indicate that there are significant differences in the mean scores of GI-S between sports.
The GI-T mean scores in table 3 show that this dimension of cohesion is highest in basketball teams and lowest in water polo teams. The results of the post hoc Duncan test demonstrate that this dimension is different between water polo teams on the one hand, and volleyball, football, and basketball teams on the other. The findings demonstrate that athletes playing in highly interactive sports teams have high levels of perception of group cohesion.
Our results show moderately-high levels of all dimensions of cohesion higher than 4. This is in accordance with the study of Brisimis et al. We also confirm the findings of Cotterill , who claims that sports that need more cooperation will also need a higher level of cohesion. It can be concluded that players of highly interdependent sports will have high levels of cohesions. The results of our study demonstrate higher perceived levels of task cohesion than social cohesion.
This means that team players are more united towards achieving their mutual goal, instead of developing good relationships for social purposes. Our results have led us to conclude that task commitment is the main element of group cohesion in sports teams. Our findings also show differences in the overall levels of cohesion in different interdependent team sports. The one-way ANOVA has shown that the levels of all four dimensions of cohesion are significantly related to the type of sport played.
The data have also shown that level of cohesion in all dimensions is highest in basketball teams followed by volleyball and lowest in most cases in water polo. The authors examined the same sports, namely football, handball, basketball, volleyball, and water polo, using the GAQ questionnaire.
Similar to our study, they also showed that gender had no effect on cohesion. No one is too big for the team. The importance of group cohesion is shared among many performance contexts including sport e. As a result, researchers and practitioners working with performance groups also attempt to facilitate perceptions of cohesion through the process of team building.
This group property has been the subject of considerable research over the past 60 years and definitions have indicated differing approaches to understanding cohesion.
For example, Gross and Martin suggested that cohesion represents the collective resistance to disruption of the group i. Alternatively, Festinger, Schachter, and Back defined cohesion as the sum of all the forces that cause members to be attracted to, and remain in, the group, and also considered these forces to be related to task and social aspects of the environment. This definition implies several characteristics of cohesion that include an ability to change over the span of group development i.
With respect to the latter points, and following from the varied approaches of earlier cohesion research, Carron, Widmeyer, and Brawley proposed a four dimension conceptual model that encompasses two different perceptual orientations i.
McEwan and Beauchamp proposed that cohesion is an emergent state resulting from and influencing other behavioral processes in which the team engages e. There is some support in the extant literature to suggest that all dimensions of group cohesion do not progress in lockstep. More global attractions to the group are proposed to develop quickly while more specific interpersonal attractions i. They found that perceptions of task cohesion remained relatively stable across exercise sessions, while social cohesion perceptions were more variable over those time points.
The researchers suggested that their results had implications toward group interventions in exercise i. This result i. The Group Environment Questionnaire GEQ has received the most attention and is the operationalization of the four dimensions of cohesion outlined in the previous section. Over time, evidence has been provided regarding the validity and reliability of responses to this assessment tool see Carron et al.
For example, Eys, Carron, Bray, and Brawley noted that the strategy of using both positively and negatively worded items might create problems for the internal consistency of certain dimensions. Furthermore, as Carron et al. To this end, researchers have translated and adapted the GEQ to ensure they had a relevant measure of cohesion for their population.
More recently, efforts have been made to examine cohesion in younger athletes including youth approximately 12 to 17 years of age; Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire; Eys et al.
Eys and colleagues noted several advantages of developing age-appropriate cohesion assessment tools including increased readability. Furthermore, for both questionnaires, the researchers found evidence that younger populations did not distinguish between group integration perceptions and their attractions to the group, but rather viewed their group more globally with respect to task and social cohesion two dimensions vs.
Overall, the efforts of researchers to develop appropriate measures of cohesion have led to a large body of literature within sport. The following section briefly highlights this information.
Without question, cohesion has been the most heavily researched group dynamics concept in sport psychology. In the following sections, examples of this research are provided to highlight the importance of this emergent state, though we note more extensive coverage can be found in other texts e. Research linking perceptions of cohesion to important individual correlates has been extensive and includes cognitive, affective, and behavioral variables.
For example, from a cognitive perspective, Shapcott and Carron found that the attributions athletes make regarding team performance were related to task cohesion. As one specific aspect, athletes who had higher perceptions of task cohesion attributed team failures to causes that were controllable and changeable a more positive attributional approach. Their findings positively linked both task and social cohesion to the development of personal and social skills, initiative, cognitive skills, and goal setting practices.
Affective variables have also been considered and, for the most part, the links have been beneficial. Several studies have examined the association between team cohesion and individual athlete satisfaction. Finally, the perceptions individuals hold regarding the cohesion of their team are believed to influence their behaviors.
Earlier research provides evidence of positive links with key variables in the sport environment, including adherence e. For example, Bruner and colleagues found that stronger perceptions of social identity expressed by athletes were positively related to task cohesion that, in turn, were related to greater prosocial behaviors and lesser antisocial behaviors toward teammates. In contrast, social cohesion perceptions promoted by stronger social identities were predictive of more antisocial behaviors toward opponents.
Given that cohesion is an emergent group state, it is not surprising that researchers have examined it in light of other important group variables. The volume of studies is too large to cover in-depth within this article, but the existing literature highlights numerous associations with structural, leadership, and environmental variables. From a structural standpoint, greater cohesion has been positively linked with perceptions of group status and roles.
For example, Jacob and Carron found that athletes perceiving higher cohesion attached less importance to status differences within their team. With respect to roles, Carron and Eys summarized that cohesion and role perceptions e.
Leaders play an essential role in the emergence of cohesion within the group. In addition, coaches not only have responsibilities for interacting effectively with each individual athlete, they also need to act in a manner that is helpful in creating a positive motivational climate.
In contrast, less cohesion is perceived when an ego-involving climate is promoted. On the basis of these previous findings, McLaren, Eys, and Murray conducted an intervention with youth soccer coaches to educate them about what constitutes a positive motivational climate and to provide strategies for them to use throughout the season. Compared to a control group, athletes whose coaches took part in the intervention perceived a stronger task-involving motivational climate as well as greater perceptions of cohesion by the end of the season.
The question pertaining to whether cohesion is linked to team performance has stretched as far back as the s, with individual sets of empirical results yielding a somewhat ambiguous picture of this relationship. In an attempt to rectify this situation, Carron, Colman, Wheeler, and Stevens conducted a meta-analysis of sport studies to determine the general relationship between cohesion and performance as well as potential moderators of this relationship.
Specifically, Carron and colleagues examined whether the cohesion-performance relationship differed with respect to type of cohesion task vs. However, there was a moderating effect of gender. However, Filho and colleagues demonstrated there were some differences in the strength of the relationship based on skill level and sport type.
The finding that gender moderates the cohesion-performance relationship was discussed by the groups of researchers. Carron and Colleagues suggested that this might be important practical knowledge for coaches and sport psychology professionals to consider when working with teams.
This question pertaining to why there may be gender differences was pursued in a qualitative study conducted by Eys and Colleagues These researchers interviewed 22 Canadian and German coaches who had experience coaching both male and female competitive sport teams over the course of their careers.
The researchers asked coaches to comment on the findings and to offer their perspectives regarding why cohesion may be a more important group property for female teams as compared to males. While it is beyond the scope of this article to highlight the results in their totality, coaches tended to agree with the empirical results in the sense that they believed that cohesion was important for both males and females, but that there is a tendency for it to be more important in female teams.
Furthermore, coaches offered interesting ideas that could form the basis for future research questions. For example, some coaches observed that the direction of the cohesion-performance relationship might differ for males and females; specifically, that cohesion may drive performance for females while performance may drive perceptions of cohesion for males.
This is an interesting proposition that has not yet been tested in the previous meta-analyses. As another example, coaches also felt that there may be temporal differences in the development of cohesion. In essence, male and female teams may differ with respect to the speed that cohesion is facilitated e.
There are a few limitations to previous research examining the cohesion-performance relationship included in the previous meta-analyses. In contrast to the general tone of the extant literature suggesting that cohesion leads to performance, Benson and colleagues found evidence that performance outcomes drive perceptions of cohesion in elite youth sport teams.
This finding opens up several research questions regarding this relationship across sport and the researchers encouraged continued investigation of the psychological mechanisms i.
Certainly, their study had several limitations e. As noted, cohesion is believed to be a force for the good of the group. As previous sections have highlighted, cohesion is associated with several important personal, team, and leadership factors, as well as team performance. However, several researchers have cautioned that there are negative aspects to cohesion that need to be considered.
This is a concern that is shared and identified by athletes as well. For example, Hardy, Eys, and Carron asked intercollegiate athletes if they viewed any downsides to group cohesion and, if so, to further discuss the specific issues. It is important to note that many of the issues raised by the athletes appeared to be interpreted in light of an imbalance of team cohesion i.
However, the perceived disadvantages of high social cohesion included the potential for communication problems among friends e. From a task perspective, the challenges included perceived increases in pressure to perform as well as decreased social and personal enjoyment. Rovio, Eskola, Kozub, Duda, and Lintunen added further support to the suggestion that group cohesion can be problematic at times.
They conducted a qualitative study with an ice-hockey team over the course of one competitive season. They suggested that the high social cohesion present on the team might have posed some challenges.
In particular, they highlighted the occurrence of several established group dynamics phenomena i. Overall, the issues raised in the Hardy et al. Although there are specific instances in which too much cohesion could be detrimental to a team, the overwhelming evidence suggests that strong group cohesion both task and social is a desirable emergent state.
The previous section outlining research on cohesion in sport highlighted the many positive individual and group correlates, with arguably the most important connection being the positive association between cohesion and performance.
In particular, these attempts to improve team effectiveness i. There is evidence to suggest that cohesion has been the primary target vs. Essentially, citation network analysis determines the interconnectedness of citations among a series of publications and determines the most central or influential texts.
In parallel, citation path analysis links key texts over time to provide a picture of the evolution of thinking around a particular topic. The major finding from Bruner and Colleagues was that the extant literature on team building in sport is largely driven by cohesion-focused research.
In particular, the work conducted by Carron and colleagues e. On one hand, this result suggests the importance of cohesion as an outcome of team building. On the other hand, the result supports Bruner et al. This point was reiterated by McEwan and Beauchamp in their review of teamwork processes in sport. They noted that team-building processes should move beyond solely considering cohesion and target additional teamwork behaviors such as coordination, cooperation, and communication.
Critiques concerning the narrowly focused nature of team-building processes aside, if these protocols are focused predominantly on cohesion, what can we say about the effectiveness of intervening with sport teams? Martin, Carron, and Burke conducted a meta-analysis to answer this very question. Their analysis included 17 studies and effect sizes emanating from the data in these investigations. Martin and colleagues found a moderate positive effect for team-building interventions when taken in totality across several dependent variables e.
However, follow-up moderation tests yielded several interesting findings. First, the researchers found that interventions using team goal setting had larger effects than those interventions that took a broader approach to team-building activities i. They surmised that more positive results might be the product of fewer activities that athletes can truly focus on. Second, consistent with past research in both sport psychology and organizational psychology, interventions were less effective when they were shorter in length i.
Third, Martin et al. Finally, the impact of team-building interventions on perceptions of cohesion both task and social were rather muted, which the researchers found interesting given that practitioners and researchers often use team building with the hopes of increasing group cohesion.
Certainly, this is a finding with implications that require future research to disentangle and consider regarding the process and targeted outcomes of team building. In the following section, information pertaining to the team-building protocols used in sport are described in further detail. Given the complex nature of group dynamics and team development, a wide variety of factors must be considered during the creation and delivery of team-building protocols.
Thus, researchers and practitioners have taken numerous approaches that have varied on their conceptual basis, delivery medium, types of activities, and outcome measures. This section provides an overview of such protocols and approaches that have been undertaken in the team-building literature in sport and exercise.
In indirect interventions, the sport psychologist works with the coaching staff to create a team-building program and develop specific strategies, which are subsequently delivered and implemented with the athletes. On the other hand, direct interventions involve the sport psychologist working directly with all members of the team i. To this end, the sport psychologist, coaching staff, and athletes share the responsibility of creating and implementing the team-building programs.
Specifically, group environment and group structure were the two main categories of input, which influenced the throughput category of group processes. Subsequently, group processes influenced the output, which mainly pertained to the cohesiveness of the group. Each category within the framework included a specific factor that was emphasized and targeted during the team-building intervention. Group structure mainly related to the norms and positions established within the group, while group processes included interaction, communication , and sacrifices among teammates as the most salient factors.
Lastly, the output category of group cohesion included the four sub-dimensions of cohesion i. In each study, the exercise classes under the experimental condition were led by leaders who were trained to implement team-building protocols in addition to standard exercise programs, whereas leaders in the control condition provided the standard exercise programs only. Specifically, the team-building training was delivered in four stages: introductory, conceptual, practical , and intervention for full descriptions of the stages, see Carron et al.
In the introductory stage, the authors educated the group leaders on the benefits of group cohesion such as greater self-esteem, trust, and adherence to the program, as well as more group stability. In the conceptual stage, the framework of team building was outlined to the group leaders. In this way, the group leaders were able to decide what specific factors within the framework should be targeted in their team-building program.
Based on this assessment, in the practical stage, the group leaders brainstormed strategies that would enhance the specific factor. Finally, in the intervention stage, the strategies developed in the previous stage were implemented by the group leader. The four dimensions of group cohesion, as well as satisfaction with the exercise classes, were included as outcome measures.
These results provided initial evidence for the usefulness of indirect team-building interventions. Ten exercise classes with a total of adolescent 13—17 years participants were randomized into an experimental group or a control group.
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