Explaining social contagion in sport applying Heider's balance theory: First experimental results

Boss, Martin; Kleinert, Jens

doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.10.006

Cited by 21 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…It was developed during 2 × 4-h sessions by the first, second, and third authors. The description included several aspects mentioned to be important for team collapse in existing literature ( Apitzsch, 2006 ; Boss and Kleinert, 2015 ), namely that the team’s performance decreased more than usual, that this happened unexpectedly and that nothing seemed to be working anymore within the team during the collapse. Participants then described a similar experience with their team preferably within the last 12 months or within the last 5 years at maximum to capitalize on memory recall.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Falcons’ performance was described as one of the toughest losses in Super Bowl history, where one could observe a team falling apart. Such an incident is an example of collective team collapse, which occurs when a team is in the lead and abruptly loses control over the game ( Boss and Kleinert, 2015 ). It describes situations where unexpectedly nothing seems to be working anymore within a team’s performance capability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent research in the area of momentum in sport showed that negative psychological changes, such as collective efficacy and team cohesion, as well as interpersonal coordination seem to play a role in causing negative momentum ( Den Hartigh et al, 2014 ). Furthermore, Boss and Kleinert (2015) discovered the social effect of performance contagion as an underlying mechanism of negative momentum with rowing pairs. These results are difficult to transfer to actual sport teams though, since they focused on teams consisting of two members, randomly assigned to each other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Suddenly Nothing Works Anymore Within a Team – Causes of Collective Sport Team Collapse

et al. 2018

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Collective team collapse occurs when multiple players of a sport team experience a sudden and extreme underperformance within a game. To date, minimal research has been conducted on the causes of collective team collapse. Thus, goals of this study were to explore perceived causes of collective team collapse in different sports and to define team collapse in contrast to negative momentum. To investigate factors causing and maintaining collective sport team collapse, an inductive, exploratory qualitative analysis of individual interviews was conducted. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 10 athletes of professional German teams of various sports playing in between first and fourth division. Participants were interviewed about a team collapse event they had experienced with their team during the past year. Data were collected and analyzed using a grounded theory methodology. Collective team collapse appeared to be induced by a temporal cascade of causes rather than by single triggers. This cascade included antecedents, which represent factors that make the occurrence of a team collapse more likely; critical events, which include specific events within the game that trigger a team collapse; as well as affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes that foster a maintenance of the collapse. Within this theoretical framework, social factors, such as decreased performance contagion or emotional contagion, played crucial roles in causing a team collapse. These results illustrate that collective team collapse is more than the sum of individual choking of multiple players at the same time. In conclusion, a new definition, differentiating team collapse from negative momentum, is introduced. Furthermore, a process model of causes of collective team collapse is proposed. The results provide first insights into causes of collective collapse in a variety of team sports. The developed model is supposed to help future research to better connect to practice and to support athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Suddenly Nothing Works Anymore Within a Team – Causes of Collective Sport Team Collapse

et al. 2018

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“…How such situations may be prevented from hampering teams' performances in future competitions should also be the focus of empirical research by psychologists working with these teams. Such research might help to provide a greater understanding of the unexpected decreases in some teams' performances at the RWC 2015 (Boss and Kleinert, 2015 ). Perhaps engaging in mental skills training using a virtual reality environment could inoculate players against the negative emotional and performance effects of social contagion.…”

Section: Final Thoughtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Player Injuries on Teams' Mental States, and Subsequent Performances, at the Rugby World Cup 2015

Hurley

2016

Front. Psychol.

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“…For example, batting averages in baseball increase when a batter follows a teammate who scored a hit, but decrease following a batter who was out [ 1 , 2 ]. Ikegami and Ganesh [ 3 ] discussed an interview with Ichiro Suzuki, a star hitter who established a number of batting records in US Major League Baseball, in which Ichiro told them that “[h]e refrains from closely watching poor batters on his team before going out to bat because it affects his own batting performance.” Although many factors may be related to this phenomenon of contagion in sports (e.g., emotional [ 4 ], mood [ 5 ], and social contagion [ 6 ]), some researchers have recently focused on motor contagion —when an actor experiences implicit effects on their own actions on the basis of the actions of others—as one influential factor of the contagion phenomenon [ 3 , 7 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The inhibition of motor contagion induced by action observation

et al. 2018

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In sports, success and failure are believed to be contagious. Yet it is unclear what might cause contagion. This study investigated whether motor contagion is associated with the active observation of the kinematic actions of others. In Experiment 1, six skilled hammer throwers threw a hammer after watching a video of a model throwing toward the left, center, or right. The video included two types of action kinematics which resulted in throw directions that were either easy or difficult to predict based on the model’s kinematics. In Experiment 2, the athletes threw hammers after watching the same stimuli as Experiment 1, but while engaging in one of two types of focus (self-focus or non-self-focus) to determine whether motor contagion could be diminished. Results demonstrated that the direction of each participant’s throw was more influenced by the videos that contained easy action kinematics, supporting a critical role for the meaningfulness of the link between an action and its outcome in producing motor contagion. Motion analysis revealed that motor contagion was not likely to be a result of the observer imitating the model’s action kinematics. The contagion observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when participants engaged in self-focus. These results suggest that motor contagion is influenced by the predictability of an action outcome when observing an action, and that motor contagion can be inhibited through self-focus when observing.

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Explaining social contagion in sport applying Heider's balance theory: First experimental results

Cited by 21 publications

References 23 publications

When Suddenly Nothing Works Anymore Within a Team – Causes of Collective Sport Team Collapse

When Suddenly Nothing Works Anymore Within a Team – Causes of Collective Sport Team Collapse

Impact of Player Injuries on Teams' Mental States, and Subsequent Performances, at the Rugby World Cup 2015

The inhibition of motor contagion induced by action observation

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