Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Although there are two sides to this incident (e.g., why did the manager not try to
resolve his differences with his captain privately or through an agreed intermediary
before summoning him to a specially convened squad meeting?), McCarthy’s decision to
dismiss Roy Keane reflects a popular coaching belief that any potential threat to team
harmony must be removed instantly. For example, Weinberg and Gould (1999) urge
players and coaches “to respond to the problem quickly so that negative feelings don’t
build up” (p. 185). Similarly Sven-Göran Eriksson, the manager of England, warned
about the danger of negative thinking within a squad: “A bad atmosphere can spread
quickly, particularly if one of the leaders of opinion’ in the team represents the negative
thinking—the captain, for instance” (Eriksson, 2002, p. 116). Curiously, the Irish team
performed exceptionally well during this competition in spite of losing its most
influential player and was defeated in the “knockout” stages by Spain only after a penalty
shootout. In summary, we have seen that team spirit or “cohesion” is important to athletes
and coaches. But what progress have psychologists made in understanding and measuring
the construct of team cohesion? Also, what does research reveal about the relationship
between the cohesion and performance of a team? The remainder of this section of the
chapter will address these questions.

Cohesion in psychology

Until now, I have used the term “cohesion” to refer to a form of social bonding between
individuals in order to achieve a common purpose. Let us now analyse this term in more
depth. According to the New Penguin English Dictionary, the word “cohesion” comes
from the Latin word “cohaerere”, meaning “to stick together” (Allen, 2000). Therefore,
in everyday life, cohesion refers to acting or working together as a unit. In physics,
however, the term has a slightly different meaning. Specifically, it designates the
molecular attraction by which the particles of a body are united together (ibid.).
Psychologists have combined the common sense and physicists’ approach to cohesion
when describing it as “the total field of forces which act on members to remain in the
group” (Festinger, Schacter and Back, 1950, p. 164). Historically, this definition emerged
from psychological research on group integration processes evident in accommodation
units for returned US veterans of the Second World War. Apart from Festinger and his
colleagues, another seminal figure in research on cohesion was the social psychologist
Kurt Lewin, a refugee from German Nazi oppression, who was fascinated by the
powerful ways in which groups affect people’s behaviour. Adopting a “field of forces”
model of human behaviour, Lewin (1935) regarded cohesion as a set of ties that bind
members of a group together. He also proposed that the main objectives of any group
were to maintain cohesion and to enhance performance—two recurrent themes
throughout the team cohesion literature.
This idea of cohesion as the “glue” that integrates members of a group was echoed
subsequently by sport psychologists but with one important modification—namely, the
idea that cohesion is multidimensional rather than unidimensional. In particular, Carron
(1982) proposed that this construct designates “a tendency for a group to stick together
and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction
of member affective needs” (Carron, Brawley and Widmeyer, 1998, p. 213). This
definition of cohesion has two implications (Dion, 2000). First, it suggests that this

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