The social influence of emotions within sports teams

Sport relies on the coordination of teammates’ behaviours to maximise performance. This responsibility is often tasked to the captain, coach, or manager of the team. Such individuals might therefore ask, “How can I influence my team to perform better?” This chapter reviews literature that helps to answer that question by proposing that one mechanism leading to coordinated social performance is emotions. Ten years ago, van Kleef introduced the emotions as social information (EASI) theory to help explain how emotions regulate social interactions. This theory stipulates that emotional expressions influence others’ behaviour through affective and inferential processes. The nature of the influence depends on others’ motivation and ability to process the emotional expressions as well as on the perceived appropriateness of the expressions. Many theoretical and empirical articles that elucidate the mechanisms and moderating factors involved in such emotional influence have since been published. However, these have mostly been contextualised within social and organisational settings, such as personal relationships, group decision making, negotiation, customer service, and leadership. Given that sports settings are inherently emotional, we contend that emotional influence also occurs in sports. To support this point, we summarise the main tenets of EASI theory, apply them to the sports context, and review emerging findings on the social effects of emotional expressions in sports.