Elsevier

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Volume 40, January 2019, Pages 152-155
Psychology of Sport and Exercise

short communication
The company we keep: Exploring the relationship between perceived teammate self-compassion and athlete self-compassion

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.10.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Team sport athletes (n = 108) participated via online surveys in a cross-sectional design.

  • Athlete perceptions of their teammates’ self-compassion positively related to individual self-compassion.

  • Gender did not moderate the relationship.

Abstract

Objectives

The purpose was to explore the relationship between athletes’ self-compassion and perceptions of their teammates’ self-compassion (descriptive norm). A secondary purpose was to explore whether gender moderated this relationship.

Design

Cross-sectional, online survey.

Method

Team sport competitive athletes (N = 108; Mage = 23.1 years; SDage = 4.68) reported their descriptive norm perceptions of their teammates’ self-compassion as well as their own self-compassion.

Results

Hierarchical regression analysis indicated a positive relationship between descriptive norms and self-compassion, explaining 17.2% of the variance in self-compassion. The more it was perceived that teammates were engaging in self-compassion, the more likely athletes reported being self-compassionate (β = 0.39). There were no significant main or interaction effects of gender.

Conclusions

Athletes’ self-compassion is related to their perceptions of how often their teammates are self-compassionate. Coaches and sport psychologists should encourage athletes to build awareness about how their cognitions and behaviours relate to others’ cognitions and behaviours.

Section snippets

Participants

One-hundred and eight adult competitive athletes from 23 teams participating in interdependent sports completed the study. Participants lived in either Australia (n = 51, 47.2%) or Canada (n = 57, 52.8%). The most frequently cited team sports were soccer (n = 12), cricket (n = 11), volleyball (n = 10), basketball (n = 10), ice hockey (n = 8), broomball (n = 8), wheelchair basketball (n = 7), and netball (n = 6). All other sports were cited fewer than five times. The mean age of participants was

Preliminary analyses

Prior to analysis, data were first screened for missing data. Approximately 10 pieces of data from different participants (nine for self-compassion, and one descriptive norm response) were missing, which was less than 0.05% of the data. Due to the small sample size, within-person mean values for those missing data points were imputed to retain all possible data (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013). Outliers and normality were examined through box plots and skewness/kurtosis values. All data were

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between self-compassion and individuals’ perceptions of their teammates’ self-compassion (descriptive norms). Further, we explored whether the relationship was moderated by gender. From the results, three discussion points are noteworthy.

First, the findings add to the growing self-compassion literature in sport contexts by supporting a relationship between perceptions of teammates’ self-compassion and athletes’ self-reported

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by a Sansom Institute for Health Research grant to the first author.

References (26)

  • N.A. Reis et al.

    Self-compassion and women athletes' responses to emotionally difficult sport situations: An evaluation of a brief induction

    Psychology of Sport and Exercise

    (2015)
  • K.S. Spink et al.

    Examining the relationship between descriptive norms and perceived effort in adolescent athletes: Effects of different reference groups

    Psychology of Sport and Exercise

    (2013)
  • I. Ajzen

    Constructing a TpB questionnaire: Conceptual and methodological considerations

    (2002)
  • K.A. Berry et al.

    An empirical phenomenology of young adult women exercisers' body self‐compassion

    Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise

    (2010)
  • M.W. Bruner et al.

    Group norms in youth sport: Role of personal and social factors

    The Sport Psychologist

    (2014)
  • R.B. Cialdini et al.

    A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1990)
  • L.D. Cronin et al.

    Transformational leadership and task cohesion in sport: The mediating role of inside sacrifice

    Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology

    (2015)
  • A.J. Crozier et al.

    Examining the effects of normative messages on perceived effort in sport

    The Sport Psychologist

    (2017)
  • L.J. Ferguson et al.

    Exploring self-compassion and eudaimonic well-being in young women athletes

    Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology

    (2014)
  • L.J. Ferguson et al.

    Self-compassion and eudaimonic well-being during emotionally difficult times in sport

    Journal of Happiness Studies

    (2015)
  • P.A. Frazier et al.

    Testing moderator and mediator effects in counseling psychology

    Journal of Counseling Psychology

    (2004)
  • K.L. Gammage et al.

    Team cohesion and individual productivity: The influence of the norm for productivity and the identifiability of individual effort

    Small Group Research

    (2001)
  • S. Hoar et al.

    A review of coping in sport

  • Cited by (0)

    View full text