It's all the same: It is important – self-construal does not moderate the relationship between team cohesion and the perceived importance of a team-competition

Abstract

Athletes that perceive an upcoming competition as personally important can be expected to react with both higher motivation as well as higher emotional intensity. Whereas the former facilitates performance, the latter might in some instances debilitate performance. A factor that predicted increased importance of a team-competition is the perceived level of team cohesion. However, it is yet unclear, whether this applies to all members of a team equally. One basic characteristic on which team-members might differ and which might affect the relationship between cohesion and competition-importance is the athletes' self-construal. Athletes with interdependent self-construals are particularly attentive to social and contextual factors, thus, it was expected they would also be more strongly affected by their team's level of cohesion when appraising the personal importance of an upcoming team-competition. German competitive team sport athletes (N = 307, 55% male, M = 23.91 years of age) responded to translations of the Self-Construal Scale, the Group Environment Questionnaire, and the Precompetitive Appraisal Measure in advance of an in-season game. While perceptions of cohesion again significantly predicted perceptions of importance (β = .13 to .25, p = .020 to < .001), interdependent self-construal did not moderate this relationship. This means, neither athletes with high nor those with low interdependent self-construals are particularly sensitive to the effects of team cohesion. Both perceive a pending team-competition as more important if they perceive their team as more cohesive. Thus, both can be expected to benefit equally from increased motivation or potentially suffer from increased emotional intensity.