Emotion–performance relationships in team sport: The role of personal and social identities

Abstract

In the field of emotion–performance relationship in achievement situations, the social dimensions of emotions have been understudied. Thus, recent advances highlighted the need to explore identity processes to know whether group belonging may influence individuals’ emotions and performance when they are involved in a task-group. The current study introduced an innovative approach to continuously capture the variability of emotions (pleasant and unpleasant), identity levels (personal and social) and performances (individual and collective) experienced during volleyball games. Six elite players ( M = 20.14 years; SD = 1.25) volunteered to participate in this research. For the purpose of this study, a program based on the Mouse Paradigm methodological approach was elaborated. A total of 9461 momentary assessments ( M = 1576.83 ± 94.38 per participant) was gathered for each of the aforementioned variables. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed a partial independence between social and personal identity, as well as an effect of identity levels on unpleasant emotions. Results also highlighted that neither identity levels nor emotions influenced individual performances. Taken together, these results were discussed in terms of theoretical and methodological advances that allow to deepen the understanding of emotions–performance relationships in the context of team-sports.