Emotional Regulation
Emotional Regulation
Can regulating emotions impact team performance?
Ever seen a coach screaming at a player to CALM DOWN? And did you notice how it didn’t work?
In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll discuss emotional regulation, and why the emotional expressions of a coach may be more important than you think.
1. Emotion as Social Information Theory (EASI) is a social psychology theory that was used to inform this study. As Dr. Gerben Van Keef, developer of EASI and author of this study states, emotions do not merely occur within individuals, but also between individuals, and further, emotional expression can elicit affective cognitive, and behavioral responses in observers.
Although the above theoretical notions have not been the subject of systematic empirical investigation in sports settings, research in other areas provides support for the basic ideas.
“It stands to reason, then, that the emotional expressions of a coach can influence how athletes feel, think, and perform.”
Let’s take a closer look. Imagine how you would feel, think and then perform after the following timeouts:
Vs.
If we watch these two timeouts, it does not seem like a massive leap to assume that the coach’s emotional expression may impact the athletes’ emotions, inform the athlete how they are performing, and impact the athletes’ behavior coming out of the timeout.
2. With that in mind, Dr. Gerben Van Kleef and his team sought to examine this theory more closely…
To study this, the research team focused on two emotions: happiness and anger. How did coaches’ expressions of happiness and anger affect athletes’ emotions, views of their performance, and their performance itself? Van Kleef and his colleagues conducted two studies with baseball, softball, and soccer teams ( 59 coaches and 605 athletes).
They found that the coaches' emotional state (happiness or anger) predicted the emotional state and the players’ perceptions of the team’s performance quality.
Further, the researchers found that the coach’s emotional expressions impacted performance; if a coach was angry, players grew more frustrated and were more likely to make errors. However, this pattern should be interpreted with caution, the authors note, “given the possibility of reverse causality; better performance may have prompted coaches' expressions of happiness, and worse performance may have prompted expressions of anger).”
3. So What?
The authors of the study conclude,
“Successful coaches will be able to monitor their own emotions, understand the effects their emotions have on players, and regulate their emotional expressions accordingly so as to enhance performance.”
How can we monitor and regulate our emotions so as to enhance performance? Research has shown that these three practices can help regulate emotions: