Abstract
Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) refers to social interactions that are intended to improve or worsen the emotions of others (Niven et al., 2011), and IER may function as a mechanism of social support (Marroquin, 2011). Athletes' IER has been associated with emotional and motivational outcomes in sport (Tamminen et al., 2016); however, there is no research to date examining how IER and perceptions of social support or cohesion are associated with performance. The purpose of this research was to examine these associations among a sample of 110 varsity team sport athletes. Participants completed measures of perceived social support (Freeman et al., 2009), social cohesion (Eys et al., 2009), and athletes rated the extent to which they engaged in affect-improving or affect-worsening IER with teammates in the days prior to and following a competition. There were significant decreases in athletes' affect-worsening IER in the days leading up to competition, while affect-improving IER decreased significantly in the days following competition. Social support moderated pre-competition trajectories of receiving affect-worsening IER in predicting the outcome of the competition: for athletes who perceived more social support from teammates, receiving less affect-worsening IER before competition was predictive of the team winning their competition. Social cohesion did not moderate any of the associations between IER, time, and performance outcome. These results indicate that athletes' perceptions of social support as well as daily interpersonal emotion regulation interactions among teammates have implications for team performance.Acknowledgments: This research was supported by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada