Understanding collective emotions to optimise sports performance

Sport is an emo­tion­al arena like no oth­er, cap­able of mobil­ising entire pop­u­la­tions. To per­form, ath­letes must learn to mas­ter the high emo­tion­al intens­ity to which they are sub­jec­ted. Tra­di­tion­ally viewed from an intra-indi­vidu­al per­spect­ive, social psy­cho­logy over­comes this short­com­ing by focus­ing on the col­lect­ive dimen­sion of emo­tion­al exper­i­ence. As a res­ult, it is open­ing up import­ant aven­ues of innov­a­tion when it comes to per­form­ance in team sports.

Team sports are inher­ently social. Per­form­ance, both indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive, is influ­enced by emo­tions, which in turn are affected by group phe­nom­ena and psychoso­cial mech­an­isms. So in a team, emo­tion­al con­ta­gion and the influ­ence of rela­tion­ships are both a risk and a poten­tial means of optim­ising performance.

What hap­pens when a pen­alty is taken in a foot­ball match? Is it exclus­ively a mat­ter of the play­er­’s emo­tion­al exper­i­ence before tak­ing the shot? A thes­is by Guil­laume Per­r­eau-Niel from the Psy-DREPI labor­at­ory at the Uni­ver­sity of Bur­gundy is cur­rently explor­ing the emo­tion­al state of the ath­lete at this cru­cial moment. In par­tic­u­lar, he is seek­ing to under­stand the factors that influ­ence a play­er­’s emo­tion­al state. Ini­tial res­ults show that, in addi­tion to the stakes (both indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive), the body lan­guage of part­ners and oppon­ents influ­ences the play­er­’s emo­tions just before tak­ing the shot.

An emo­tion is a sub­ject­ive exper­i­ence that stems from bio­lo­gic­al and cog­nit­ive pro­cesses. The lat­ter depend on how the indi­vidu­al assesses the import­ance of what is at stake, their abil­ity to cope with it and their degree of respons­ib­il­ity in the situ­ation. This sub­ject­ive cog­nit­ive assess­ment of the situ­ation (or “apprais­al”) explains why the same situ­ation arouses dif­fer­ent emo­tions in dif­fer­ent people. In sport, the per­cep­tion of what is at stake var­ies enorm­ously. For example, an ath­lete’s per­cep­tion changes accord­ing to their exper­i­ence or degree of iden­ti­fic­a­tion with the team: a seni­or play­er in the French nation­al team will exper­i­ence a match dif­fer­ently from a team-mate selec­ted for the first time.

Along­side these indi­vidu­al feel­ings, so-called “col­lect­ive” emo­tion depends largely on the iden­tity pro­cess, because we are all part of dif­fer­ent social iden­tit­ies. These may be social cat­egor­ies linked to gender, age, polit­ic­al class, skin col­our, etc. They are also task groups, of which sports teams are a pro­to­type. An ath­lete will activ­ate dif­fer­ent iden­tit­ies depend­ing on the con­text. A female rugby play­er may wear the hats of sports­wo­man, moth­er, wife, team mem­ber and so on. The one she activ­ates will influ­ence her vis­ion of the world, and there­fore of the situ­ation, gen­er­at­ing dif­fer­ent emo­tions. Social iden­tit­ies there­fore con­di­tion what are known as inter­group emo­tions, as described by Diane Mack­ie in the 2000s¹. These are the emo­tions that thrill us when our nation­al team wins a match, or that under­pin the mech­an­ics of oppos­i­tion in derbies.

So when play­ers identi­fy with their team, they exper­i­ence shared and com­mon emo­tions. This emo­tion­al group exper­i­ence makes the group a psychoso­cial entity in its own right. This paradigm is far from neut­ral when it comes to optim­ising per­form­ance. In fact, a 2018 study shows that the player’s per­cep­tion of this shared emo­tion has a great­er influ­ence on his per­form­ance than his own indi­vidu­al emo­tions². Top-level ath­letes there­fore need to work not only on their emo­tion­al skills – identi­fy­ing the emo­tions of oth­ers and learn­ing to reg­u­late and express them – but also on a cer­tain “iden­tity intelligence”.

These sys­tems lead us to work on the rela­tion­ship between emo­tions and per­form­ance in team sports through the mech­an­isms of emo­tion­al con­ta­gion. The way in which emo­tions are expressed can be more or less con­tam­in­at­ing. Indeed, stud­ies show that lead­ing play­ers have a con­sid­er­able influ­ence on group emo­tion. All it takes is for them to break down to have a psy­cho-affect­ive impact on the rest of the group.

Social psy­cho­logy in sport is begin­ning to study these para­met­ers and how they influ­ence per­form­ance. This requires the use of tech­no­logy to obtain reli­able indic­at­ors of emo­tions. Research­ers gen­er­ally use psy­cho­physiolo­gic­al meas­ure­ments (car­di­ac activ­ity, elec­tro­dermal con­duct­ance, elec­tromyo­grams of facial muscles, etc.). How­ever, these are not adap­ted for use in sports. As for psy­cho­met­ric tools, such as self-report meas­ure­ment scales³, they only allow for a pos­teri­ori meas­ure­ment and are some­times too influ­enced by the sub­jectiv­ity of the sub­ject. There is a lack of tools for in situ meas­ure­ment, par­tic­u­larly of col­lect­ive emo­tions. Sport sci­ence research is there­fore devel­op­ing new tools. They will exploit body lan­guage, for example, using auto­mat­ic learn­ing algorithms.

This is the case of the TEAM-SPORTS pro­ject, fun­ded by the France 2030 ini­ti­at­ive through the pri­or­ity research pro­gramme “Very High Per­form­ance Sport”, launched with the Par­is Olympic Games. The pro­ject brings togeth­er the French rugby (FFR), bas­ket­ball (FFBB), hand­ball (FFHB), vol­ley­ball (FFVol­ley) and foot­ball (FFF) fed­er­a­tions. One of its aims is to devel­op tech­no­lo­gies to cap­ture the emo­tion­al states of teams. For example, a video track­ing tech­no­logy using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is being developed by the CEA in col­lab­or­a­tion with the Psy-DREPI labor­at­ory. It auto­mat­ic­ally tracks the indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive body lan­guage of rugby play­ers dur­ing matches.

As part of the same pro­ject, the French nation­al team has benefited from anoth­er pilot pro­gramme to cap­ture the influ­ence of game events – such as scor­ing a try – on the emo­tion­al state of the team. The aim is to study emo­tion­al dynam­ics dur­ing matches in order to provide innov­at­ive inform­a­tion to coaches and help them make stra­tegic choices. This tool was put to the test in inter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tion dur­ing the World Cup in the sum­mer of 2023 and has recently been adap­ted for rugby 7s so that the French team can bene­fit from it dur­ing the Par­is Games.

Hav­ing these met­rics at our dis­pos­al will help us to meas­ure their effects on indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive per­form­ance, in a psy­cho­lo­gic­al bal­ance of power – which is the very essence of com­pet­i­tion in team sport. Ulti­mately, this research is inten­ded to be trans­ferred to sports teams as a sci­entif­ic tool to sup­port per­form­ance. How­ever, the tim­ing of the research dif­fers from that of sport­ing com­pet­i­tion. Integ­rat­ing this sci­entif­ic sup­port into team man­age­ment is one of the major chal­lenges of high per­form­ance. This means redu­cing the delays inher­ent in research, so as to stay ahead of oth­er nations through innov­a­tion. We also need to sys­tem­at­ic­ally pri­or­it­ise the accel­er­a­tion of know­ledge trans­fer with­in sports eco­sys­tems. The future of high per­form­ance is inex­or­ably linked to this type of approach, which will integ­rate sports sci­ent­ists spe­cial­ising in human sci­ences into staff, clubs and federations.

Agnès Vernet