"Like Emotional Zombies"-Individual and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation of Sport Teams in Collective Team Collapse and Performance Recovery Situations.

Abstract

The collective collapse of a sport team is typically accompanied by unpleasant emotions and their transfer between team members. Strategies to regulate these emotions may determine whether a team collapse unfolds in a team. Applying a pragmatist interpretivist paradigm, we explored emotion regulation strategies applied by sport teams in team collapse versus performance recovery situations and used video recordings of both situations to stimulate focus group interviews and conduct written observations. Twenty-two athletes of four sport teams (cricket, volleyball, and European handball) and three observers from the same sports participated. We used reflexive thematic analysis to analyze the data. Results showed that applied emotion regulation strategies differed between team collapse and performance recovery situations with fewer and less effective strategies used in team collapse situations. This may be due to an emotional shutdown and/or the avoidance of emotion regulation. Future research developing and testing prevention and intervention strategies is needed.