A Case Study of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Within a Varsity Volleyball Team

Abstract

This study used an instrumental case study approach to investigate the ways teammates within a female varsity volleyball team regulated one another's emotions, the factors that were perceived to influence interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), and athletes' preferences for regulating their own and others' emotions. Fourteen athletes participated in semistructured interviews and reported using a variety of emotion-improving and emotion-worsening IER strategies, in addition to occasionally choosing not to engage in IER, and several factors were found to influence IER (e.g., athletes' roles and interpersonal factors). This study has theoretical implications and applied implications for athletes, coaches, and sport psychology consultants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 This study was conducted as part of Tess Palmateer's master's thesis at the University of Toronto. We thank the participants for sharing their experiences with us for this study. We also acknowledge the thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers on a previous draft of this manuscript. Finally, we acknowledge the contribution of the first author's committee members.