Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

experience greater cohesiveness after successful performance maybe even stronger” (p.
222, italics mine). If this is so, then perhaps there is some truth to the old idea that “team
spirit” is what a team gains after it achieves success! A critical perspective on the issue of
distinguishing between cause and effect is presented in Box 7.1.

Box 7.1 Thinking critically about the direction of causality in

cohesion-performance research

Every psychology student is taught that “correlation does not imply causality”. In other
words, just because two variables are related to each other does not mean that one earned
the other. After all, there could be a third, confounding factor which is the real cause of
the correlation in question. Nevertheless, certain correlational research designs allow
investigators to draw conclusions about causal relationships between variables in the
absence of experimental manipulations or controls. To illustrate, a “cross-lagged panel
correlation” research design (Rozelle and Campbell, 1969) can provide useful clues to the
question of causality. Briefly, this design is based on the assumption that analysis of the
pattern of correlations between variables at different times (note that the term “lagged”
means that there is a time-lag between the collection of some of the correlations) allows
certain inferences to be drawn about possible causal links between these variables. In
particular, if one variable causes another, then it seems likely that it should be more
strongly related to the second variable later in time—because it is assumed that causes
take time to produce effects. Using this cross-lagged research design, Bakeman and
Helmreich (1975) measured cohesion and performance in water-sports teams on two
separate occasions. Results showed that “first-segment” cohesiveness was highly
associated with “second-segment” cohesiveness but not with second-segment
performance. Accordingly, these authors concluded that team cohesion was not a good
predictor of team performance but that successful performance may have contributed to
the development of strong cohesiveness.

Some critical questions
Why is it important for researchers to indicate the precise time at which team
cohesiveness and performance data were collected? Can you think of any flaws in the
logic underlying cross-lagged panel research designs? If performance influences cohesion
more than cohesion influences performance, what mechanisms could explain this
finding? What are the practical implications of this idea that performance affects team
cohesion?

Apart from the preceding conclusions, what other findings have emerged from the
research literature on cohesion and performance? One way of answering this question is
by augmenting narrative reviews (i.e., those in which researchers draw informal
conclusions from reviewing relevant evidence) with meta-analytic reviews of available
research. As we indicated in Chapter 2, a meta-analysis is literally an analysis of
analyses, or a quantitative synthesis of published research on a particular question (e.g.,
“does team cohesion affect athletic performance?”) in order to determine the effect of one

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