A review of the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport

ABSTRACT

There has recently been a surge in sport psychology research examining various aspects of the interpersonal and social processes related to emotions and emotion regulation. The purpose of this study was to review the literature related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport, in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the studies that have been conducted to date. A scoping review of the literature (Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. [2009]. A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108) using a systematic search process returned 7,769 entries that were screened for inclusion; the final sample of studies included in the review consisted of 79 relevant articles and 8 dissertations. The results describe the interconnected findings on athletes’ self-regulation of emotions in social contexts, interpersonal emotion regulation, collective emotions (group-based emotions, emotional contagion, and effervescence), emotional expressions, and individual and contextual moderators (e.g. personality, culture, norms, gender, roles, and situational/temporal aspects). We identify key issues to advance theory and research, including: the need for programmatic research to investigate these processes, their effects, and underlying mechanisms; greater theoretical and conceptual clarity; more research among diverse populations (e.g. female athletes, youth athletes); the need to consider interconnected emotional phenomena in future research; and the need for applied intervention research.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective emotions
• group-based emotions
• interpersonal emotion regulation
• emotional contagion
• emotion regulation

Indisputably, sport is an emotional context with athletes, coaches, and spectators being highly invested in their endeavours, and experiencing and exhibiting a range of emotions and affective experiences (Jones & Uphill, 2012). Emotions are relatively brief episodes of responses to events that are deemed to be of major significance to individuals (Wagstaff & Tamminen, 2021), with commonly studied emotions including anxiety, sadness, fear, anger, joy, or pride. Substantial research has examined the experiences and impacts of different types of emotions in sport (Jones et al., 2005), the fluctuations in emotions across sporting events and seasons (e.g. Hanton et al., 2002; Levillain et al., 2022), the consequences of emotions for performance (Doron & Martinent, 2021), and impacts of emotions and emotion expressions for team functioning (Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016). Given the impact of emotions on athletes’ sport performance, there have also been substantial efforts devoted to understanding how athletes regulate their emotions. For example, athletes have been found to use a variety of emotion regulation strategies to deal with stressors and resultant emotions in sport (e.g. Stanley et al., 2012), and these strategies vary in their effectiveness for managing emotions (Balk et al., 2013). In addition, many sport psychology interventions focus on athletes’ emotions and emotion regulation (Uphill et al., 2009), further illustrating the importance of emotions and the need for effective emotion regulation to achieve performance success.

Recently, sport psychology researchers have started to examine how emotions and emotion regulation processes function within the social context of sport, and there has been a notable ‘interpersonal turn’ and an increase in research examining the social aspects of emotional phenomena in sport (Wagstaff & Tamminen, 2021). Notably, researchers have examined the emotional expressions of athletes and coaches in sport settings and the ways that these expressions may influence individuals and groups (e.g. Allan & Côté, 2016; Lee & Chelladurai, 2016; Wolf et al., 2018), the experience of collective emotions (e.g. Reyson & Branscombe, 2010; Stieler & Germelmann, 2016) and group-based emotions (e.g. Campo, Champely, Louvet, et al., 2019; Campo, Mackie, Champely, et al., 2019), as well as emotional self-regulation and the ways that athletes and coaches may attempt to regulate the emotions of others (e.g. Braun & Tamminen, 2019; Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al., 2016). These studies attest to a conceptualization of emotions as social phenomena as well as their social influences, causes, and opportunities for regulation.

At this point, researchers have reviewed some of the interpersonal emotion phenomena separately (e.g. interpersonal emotion regulation, Friesen, Lane, et al., 2013; identity-based emotions, Campo et al., 2019; nonverbal behaviour, Furley, 2021). Yet, we believe the expanding literature on the social and interpersonal aspects of athletes’ emotions and emotion regulation may benefit from being subjected to a review that examines the breadth of existing research across multiple areas, as these are conceptually adjacent but have been studied in isolation. For example, nonverbal emotion expressions may be used for interpersonal emotion regulation, which may in turn induce identity-based emotions. A review of these related concepts can provide clarity about similar phenomena and processes that have been studied to date, and it can identify areas where concepts or processes may have been investigated in ‘silos’ and hence would benefit from further integration. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive scoping review of the literature related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport.

Surveying the terrain: existing theories and concepts

In undertaking a review of the literature on the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport, it is apparent that there are multiple concepts, models, and theoretical frameworks that have informed investigations of these phenomena. For example, sport researchers (e.g. Friesen et al., 2015; van Kleef et al., 2019) have drawn on van Kleef’s (2009) Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model which theorizes the ways in which emotional expressions influence others. Specifically, the EASI model proposes that emotional expressions trigger either more automatic affective reactions or more deliberate inferential processing in the observers and these, in turn, drive behavioural responses (van Kleef, 2009; van Kleef & Côté, 2022). For instance, an athlete may perceive the emotional expressions of a teammate or a coach and respond with reciprocal or complementary emotions (e.g. anger expressions triggering anger versus fear responses), while making inferences about the other person’s emotions, attitudes, values, and intended actions, and responding accordingly (e.g. interpreting anger expressions as the communication of performance dissatisfaction and increasing one’s effort on subsequent tasks).

In addition to the EASI model, researchers (e.g. Friesen et al., 2015; Furley et al., 2015) have used Keltner and Haidt’s (1999) broader social-functional perspective of emotions to investigate the ways that emotions function within social contexts in sport. Keltner and Haidt (1999) outlined that emotions serve social functions and coordinate behaviour in groups in several ways: by informing individuals about their social context or events that require action; by preparing individuals to respond to problems that arise in interactions with others; by communicating emotions, beliefs, and intentions to others; by evoking complementary or reciprocal emotions in others; by helping define group boundaries and identifing group membership and status; and by defining cultural identities and communicating cultural norms, values, and power structures.

Aside from these more comprehensive theoretical accounts of the social effects of emotions, researchers in sport have also investigated specific socio-emotional phenomena. One of these phenomena is collective emotions, an emergent state that is characterized by the ‘[agreement] in affective responding across individuals towards a specific event or object’ (von Scheve & Ismer, 2013, p. 406). Under this umbrella term, researchers have investigated group-based emotions (Campo, Mackie, Champely, et al., 2019), which are a type of collective emotions that result from individuals’ identification with a social group (e.g. a sports team) and events that impact this group (Smith, 1993), and emotional contagion, a process whereby individuals ‘catch’ others’ emotional responses (Hatfield et al., 1994), potentially resulting in emotional agreement. Some research in sport also documents the occurrence of collective effervescence, a particular collective emotional phenomenon that is characterized by shared attention and action, amplified emotional responsiveness, and intense positivity (Durkheim, 1965). Finally, regarding the regulation of emotions in interpersonal or social settings, researchers in sport have drawn on conceptualizations offered by Niven et al. (2011) and Gross and Thompson (2007) that detail the various regulatory strategies that individuals may use to maintain, increase, or decrease their own and others’ emotional states (e.g. Campo et al., 2017; Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al., 2016; 2019).

Overall, there is a growing collection of studies and reviews in the sport literature that focus on the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions, and they have variously drawn on different concepts and theoretical perspectives (e.g. Campo et al., 2019; Friesen, Lane, et al., 2013; Furley, 2021; Tamminen & Bennett, 2017). Undertaking a comprehensive review of the literature across these phenomena would be valuable in providing a bridge across ‘islands’ of research that have been conducted in adjacent topic areas, identifying advances and gaps in the literature, and informing future theorizing and inquiry in a more interconnected manner. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a scoping review of the literature related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport.

Methods

Scoping review

We conducted a scoping review of the literature, which aims to ‘map the key concepts that underpin a field of research, as well as to clarify working definitions, and/or the conceptual boundaries of a topic’ (Peters et al., 2020, p. 408). A scoping review is well-suited to addressing broad research questions in order to review and synthesize the existing literature, to ‘summarize an abundance of information to broadly discern what is known on a given topic’ (Sabiston et al., 2021, p. 2), and to provide recommendations for future research and practice (Grant & Booth, 2009). Because scoping reviews are used to provide a broad overview of a topic and the results are mainly descriptive or thematic (Sabiston et al., 2021), a quality assessment is generally not performed on studies included in the review (Peters et al., 2020).

Search strategy

We systematically searched the literature across three databases (PsychINFO, SPORTDiscus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global), and conducted a backward search of references in the articles retrieved from the database searches (Harari et al., 2020). The list of keywords for database searches is included in the Supplementary Materials. We also sought the assistance of a librarian with expertise in database searches to support our search strategy. Other potential articles to include in the review were determined based on the authors’ knowledge of the literature. Searching at least two databases, searching the ‘grey’ literature (e.g. dissertations and theses), and including additional complementary search strategies (e.g. backward search of references, librarian peer reviewer of search protocols, personal correspondence and knowledge of the literature) are strategies that have been recommended for meeting the expectations of a high-quality literature search (Harari et al., 2020).

Database search

See Figure 1 for an overview of the search procedures. The initial database search returned 7,473 records (3,745 from PsycINFO, 3,564 from SPORTDiscus, 164 from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global). The third and fourth authors conducted an initial screening and independently reviewed the titles and abstracts of each record (inclusion and exclusion criteria are included in the Supplementary Materials). For the records that were identified for potential inclusion by the research team (176 from PsychINFO, 89 from SPORTDiscus, 10 dissertations from ProQuest), the first and second authors reviewed the full texts and determined which records to include in the review (47 articles and three dissertations from PsycINFO, 24 articles from SPORTDiscus, four dissertations from ProQuest). Of the 197 articles that were excluded after full-text review, 23 articles and one dissertation were excluded for being flagged as duplicates.

Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram for article screening.

The database search was re-run in January 2021 using the same procedures (see Figure 1), returning an additional 296 records (181 records from PsycINFO, 109 records from SPORTDiscus, and 6 dissertations from ProQuest) which were screened by the third and fourth authors. Twelve records were identified for potential inclusion and full-text review following this initial screening (7 articles from PsycINFO, 4 articles from SPORTDiscus, and 1 dissertation from ProQuest). The first and second authors then reviewed the 12 records, retaining 4 articles and 1 dissertation for inclusion in the review.

As displayed in Figure 1, a manual search of the reference lists of included articles was also conducted. In total, 79 articles and 8 dissertations were included in the present review; of these, 6 had a corresponding published article that was based on data from the dissertation. For the purposes of the present review, the authors’ primary focus was on peer-reviewed articles, which took precedence in the analysis over their corresponding dissertations.

Scoping review data extraction and synthesis of results

A spreadsheet was created to extract details regarding the purpose, participants, sample, methodology, data collection, data analysis, and key findings for each study included in the review (see Supplementary Materials Table S1). The analysis and synthesis of the study findings was led by the first and second authors; this process began by reading each article and summarizing the key findings from each study, as well as identifying the main topic(s) that the article contributed to within the scope of the review (e.g. collective emotions, interpersonal emotion regulation, etc.). Subsequently, we worked across articles to synthesize the findings, consider the scope and focus of concepts that were investigated, as well as to identify gaps in the literature.

Results and discussion

The interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport contexts covers a broad range of emotional phenomena, including athletes’ emotional self-regulation in social contexts, interpersonal emotion regulation (between teammates, opponents, and from coaches), collective emotions (including group-based emotions, emotional contagion, and effervescence), emotional expressions as well as the individual and contextual properties moderating the experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in social contexts (i.e. personality, culture, norms, gender, roles, and situational/temporal aspects). In many cases, studies produced findings related to multiple areas; in the following results and discussion section we summarize the key findings within each of these topic areas, while also acknowledging that these are loose boundaries and that these concepts are interrelated. A summary of the descriptive features of the included articles is provided in Table 1; a summary of the included dissertations is included in Table 2.

Table 1. Summary of descriptive information from included articles.

	Total Number
Number of Studies by Participant Group
Athletes	35
Athletes & Coaches	8
Athletes & Support Staff	2
Athletes, Coaches & Support Staff	3
Athletes & Spectators	1
Coaches	10
Spectators/Fans	12
Spectators/Fans & Officials	1
Officials	1
Support Staff	2
Other/Various	4
Number of Participants^a
Total Number of Participants	9,739
Athletes	4,744
Coaches	1,437
Spectators/Fans	3,416
Officials	60
Support Staff	79
Other/Various	3
Number of Studies by Participant Gender
Male-only	20
Female-only	3
Mixed	44
Did Not Specify/Insufficient Information	12
Number of Studies by Type of Sport
Individual	12
Team	53
Mixed	13
Did not specify	1
Number of Studies by Methodological Approach
Quantitative	36
Qualitative	36
Mixed Methods	7

^aStudies that reported approximate sample sizes or provided insufficient information to discern a specific sample size were excluded from the total tallies of participants. These studies included: Cottingham (2012), Gallmeier (1987), Hopfensitz and Mantilla (2019), Moll et al. (2010), Sanderson (2016), Smith (2008), Staw et al. (2019), Stieler and Germelmann (2016), Uchida et al. (2009; Study 1 sample excluded), and Wagstaff et al. (2012b).

Table 2. Summary of descriptive information from included dissertations.

Criteria
Participant Group	Number of Dissertations (8 total)	Dissertation
Athletes	4	*Friesen (2013) *Palmateer (2016) *Smith (2009) Swary (2020)
Athletes & Coaches	1	*Braun (2017)
Coaches	1	*Lee (2012)
Spectators/Fans	1	Lee (2014)
Sport Organization (athletes, coaches, support staff)	1	*Larner (2018)
Participant Gender
Male-only	3
Female-only	1
Mixed	3
Did not specify	1
Type of Sport
Individual	2
Team	4
Mixed	2
Methodological Approach
Quantitative	3
Qualitative	5

*Indicates dissertations for which a published article was included in the review.

Emotional self-regulation in social contexts

Athletes’ emotional self-regulation is implicated in the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions. For example, male rugby players (Campo et al., 2017) and female curlers (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013) report engaging in self-regulation and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies during competitions, while sporting officials (Friesen et al., 2017) and coaches (Hodgson et al., 2017; Mueller et al., 2018) also report using self-regulation strategies to manage their emotions while attempting to regulate the emotions of others. Athletes’ capacity to engage in interpersonal emotion regulation, however, may be attenuated or constrained because they are focused on their own emotional self-regulation, and athletes’ attentional and emotional capacity to help teammates regulate their emotions may be limited in challenging situations (Campo et al., 2017; Tamminen & Crocker, 2013). Further, athletes’ confidence in their ability to regulate their own emotions and their teammates’ emotions is significantly correlated with the frequency of athletes’ self – and interpersonal emotion regulation efforts (Friesen et al., 2019).

A particular type of emotional self-regulation in social contexts is emotional labour. Emotional labour refers to the ‘regulation of both feeling and expression of emotions to achieve organizational goals’ (Grandey, 2000, p. 97) and consists of three facets: surface acting (modifying outward expression of emotions), deep acting (attempting to modify and express feelings appropriate to the situation), and genuine expression (spontaneously experiencing and displaying appropriate emotions). In line with its relation to work roles and organizational norms, emotional labour has been studied among coaches (e.g. Lee & Chelladurai, 2016) and within sport organizations (Larner et al., 2017). Here, surface acting in particular appears to contribute to negative outcomes, including burnout and intentions to leave sport organizations (Larner et al., 2017). Additional qualitative investigations of emotional labour among athletes have been conducted by Collinson (2005), Evers (2019), Gallmeier (1987), Sinden (2010), Mankad and colleagues (2009), Sacha (2017), and Smith (2008); we noted several of these studies have been published in the sport sociology literature. The results from these rich qualitative accounts demonstrate athletes’ engagement in emotional labour or forms of emotion management to try and appear positive and confident in the face of adversity, such as when dealing with injuries and during rehabilitation (e.g. Mankad et al., 2009; Sinden, 2010). For example, Mankad et al. (2009) noted that injured athletes suppressed their actual emotions to make coaches feel better and to ensure younger athletes were not negatively affected by witnessing negative emotions surrounding injury. Evers (2019) also described the use of surface acting among free surfers to appear authentic to their fans and to avoid losing sponsorship or being replaced, resulting in a loss of joy and interest in surfing and increased experiences of depression.

Interpersonal emotion regulation

Under the umbrella of interpersonal emotion regulation, researchers have predominantly examined direct actions between teammates to regulate one another’s emotions (Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al, 2016; Tamminen & Crocker, 2013; Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018; Tamminen et al., 2019; Wolf et al., 2018), although playing music via speakers in the locker room might also be a strategy to regulate the team’s arousal level and emotions to enhance performance (Swary, 2020). In addition, researchers have explored sledging by opponents (Davis et al., 2018; Ring et al., 2019), interpersonal emotion regulation among referees (Friesen et al., 2017), and strength and conditioning coaches’ actions to regulate others’ emotions in order to promote effective organizational functioning, gain compliance, and work effectively with their clients (Hings, Wagstaff, Thelwell et al., 2018; Wagstaff et al., 2012b).

Athletes have been found to use a number of different strategies in combination to improve or worsen the emotions of others (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018; Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al., 2016; 2019), including verbal and behavioural strategies (Friesen et al., 2015) and deliberate and non-deliberate strategies (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013). In some cases these strategies have been categorized according to their purported function along Gross’ (1998) process model of emotion regulation (e.g. situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation; Braun & Tamminen, 2019; Campo et al., 2017; Friesen et al., 2017). Athletes also report multiple reasons or motives for engaging in interpersonal emotion regulation, including instrumental (i.e. performance) and social-relational motives (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013), or alternatively, for altruistic motives (purpose was for the best interest of the teammate), egoistic motives (purpose was for one’s own personal benefits), or a combination of these motives (Campo et al., 2017). In line with these motives, athletes perceive interpersonal emotion regulation actions to be associated with performance outcomes and teammate relationships (Campo et al., 2017; Friesen et al., 2015; Tamminen & Crocker, 2013; Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018). Notably, varsity athletes’ receipt of affect-worsening interpersonal emotion regulation from teammates has been associated with poorer team performance (Tamminen et al., 2019), and adolescent athletes’ efforts to regulate their teammates’ emotions are associated with their own sport enjoyment and commitment (Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al., 2016).

Given there is relatively little quantitative research supporting the purported associations between interpersonal emotion regulation and important outcomes in sport, there is a need for further research to establish the extent to which interpersonal emotion regulation actually affects athletes’ emotions and performance, as well its impact on other important outcomes such as perceived quality of relationships, team cohesion, and collective efficacy. Furthermore, researchers should consider both self-regulation and interpersonal emotion regulation processes concurrently, as these have generally been examined as separate processes. Another area of future research that may advance this topic could be to examine athletes’ capacity to engage in self- and interpersonal emotion regulation, and the qualities, characteristics, and skills of particularly effective emotional regulators.

Interpersonal emotion regulation by coaches

Although interpersonal emotion regulation has been investigated mostly among athletes, coaches too engage in various strategies to try and regulate the emotions of their athletes, potentially compensating for athletes’ need for self-regulation (Braun & Tamminen, 2019). In these efforts, coaches use a variety of strategies such as adapting a workout, goal-setting, and dressing room slogans (Braun & Tamminen, 2019; Donoso-Morales et al., 2017; Gallmeier, 1987). Nonetheless, the most pronounced tool coaches use to regulate their teams’ emotions is their speeches before and during competitions (Allain et al., 2018; Gallmeier, 1987; Staw et al., 2019; Turman, 2005, 2007). Coaches’ speeches seem to be an effective tool for interpersonal emotion regulation because they impact teams’ emotions, energy levels, inspiration, confidence, motivation, and focus (Gonzalez et al., 2011; Vargas & Short, 2011). Interestingly, coaches take into account hedonic costs (e.g. inducing greater unpleasant affect) in order to further instrumental outcomes (e.g. greater effort by athletes; Braun & Tamminen, 2019; Donoso-Morales et al., 2017; Gallmeier, 1987). Finally, coaches tailor their speeches depending on the circumstances (see section below on situational and temporal dynamics), team emotions, and athlete leader activity (e.g. emotion regulation by coaches may be unnecessary when athlete leaders have done the job already; Allain et al., 2018).

Collective emotions

Athletes have reported the existence and experience of both pleasant and unpleasant collective emotions (Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016) and teams also show affective agreement (Filho, 2020) or expressions of collective happiness and anger (Hopfensitz & Mantilla, 2019). As in other contexts (Knight & Eisenkraft, 2015), collective emotions in sport are perceived to amplify individual emotional experiences, impact teams’ task-related functioning, and support groups’ social integration (e.g. communicate team values; Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016). For example, more intense positive team-referent emotions predicted better rugby performance at both player and team levels (Campo, Champely, Louvet, et al., 2019) ‘and greater collective happiness predicted better performance in baseball, softball, and soccer teams (van Kleef et al., 2019). Conversely, greater collective anger predicted worse team performance (van Kleef et al., 2019) and negative collective emotions have been identified as correlates and drivers of collective team collapse (Wergin et al., 2018). At the most basic level, collective emotions arise if individuals encounter the same environmental stimulus, such as shared (organizational) stressors, (strategic) leader input, or (publicly broadcasted) locker room music (Swary, 2020; Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016), or if they pursue and achieve collective goals (Campo, Champely, Louvet, et al., 2019; Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016).

Group-based emotions

In a sport context, experiencing emotions ‘on behalf of the team’ (Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016, p. 32) have been reported by athletes but seem to be especially prevalent in spectators. Specifically, fans’ emotions appear to change in line with their favoured teams’ performance (Jones et al., 2012), with soccer fans feeling more intense negative emotions following a loss compared to a win of their national teams (Crisp et al., 2007), baseball fans feeling pride in response to their favoured teams’ good performance (Chang et al., 2017), and students experiencing intense happiness after challenging but victorious matches, yet decreased happiness in response to a loss of their universities’ basketball and American football teams (Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020; Wann et al., 1994). Notably, in both spectators and athletes, emotional intensity increased with stronger social identification (Crisp et al., 2007; Faure et al., 2014; Lee, 2014; Reyson & Branscombe, 2010; Wann et al., 1994). Inversely, aligned with the notions of Basking In Reflected Glory (BIRGing; Cialdini et al., 1976) and Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORFing; Snyder et al., 1986), the greater experience of positive group-based emotions linked with stronger social identification and self-esteem (Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020; Sullivan, 2018; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020).

Finally, whereas athletes’ collective self-construal did not predict emotions during competition (Campo et al., 2018), it seems to relate to the quality of emotional experiences prior to and after competition, with greater collective construals relating to athletes’ increased positive and reduced negative emotions in response to teammates and opponents (Campo, Mackie, Champely, et al., 2019). Additionally, sport fans’ collective construals are associated with increased anger and reduced sadness in response to a team loss (Crisp et al., 2007). Specifically, collective self-construal related to a reduced tendency to avoid fans of the opposing team after a loss; these findings align with intergroup emotions theory (i.e. group-based emotion driving behaviour towards the outgroup; Mackie & Smith, 1998) and the innate action tendencies associated with emotions (i.e. sadness possessing a greater avoidance orientation than anger).

Emotional contagion

Athletes from various sports have reported the contagion of both pleasant and unpleasant emotions within their teams (Petitta & Jiang, 2020; Swary, 2020; Wergin et al., 2018; Wolf et al., 2018) and these processes have been linked with teams’ collective emotions (Totterdell, 2000; Wolf et al., 2018). Spectators, too, have been observed to catch each other’s emotional valence, yet only if they were fans of the same team (i.e. members of the same social category; Weisbuch & Ambady, 2008). Importantly, emotional contagion (and the resultant collective emotions) seems to impact team performance in that a transfer of happiness predicted better performance (Totterdell, 2000; van Kleef et al., 2019), whereas a transfer of negative emotions (e.g. anger, fear) predicted dysfunctional goal pursuit (Petitta & Jiang, 2020), reduced team performance (Petitta & Jiang, 2020; van Kleef et al., 2019), and perpetuated collective team collapse (Wergin et al., 2018). Potentially due to these consequences, some athletes employ emotion regulation in order to prevent undesired emotional contagion. For example, injured athletes hide their negative emotions because they want to avoid them spreading to teammates and coaches (Mankad et al., 2009), and members distance themselves from their team prior to a match to avoid catching suboptimal emotions (Wolf et al., 2018). In addition, teammates may work to compensate each other’s affect to maintain an optimal average (Filho, 2020). These findings demonstrate the interconnectedness of athletes’ experience of emotions in team and group settings with their self- and interpersonal emotion regulation efforts.

Collective effervescence

Collective effervescence has been documented primarily in crowds of American football and soccer spectators (Cottingham, 2012; Stieler & Germelmann, 2016; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020). However, athletes also experience collective effervescence, for example, as part of a national team (Faure et al., 2014) or group-based physical activity (Zumeta et al., 2016). Key correlates and potential consequences of collective effervescence are greater group identification, integration, and efficacy. As such, experiences of stronger effervescence are linked with spectators’ enhanced in-group bias, unity, perceived community, and confidence (Cottingham, 2012; Stieler & Germelmann, 2016). Similarly, stronger effervescence within athlete groups was perceived to increase groupness and cohesion (Faure et al., 2014), and predicted enhanced collective efficacy and shared flow (Zumeta et al., 2016). Potentially due to the intense positivity that accompanies effervescence, however, the greater group identification and efficacy do not seem to coincide with in-group (i.e. national) favouritism or out-group (i.e. immigrant) derogation (Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020).

With regard to shared attention, soccer fans reported experiencing effervescence if they had a shared goal, and American football fans exhibited stronger effervescence if they were closer to one another and had a shared focus of attention (Cottingham, 2012); this is also supported by experimental evidence that indicates watching an American football match in the company of others, as compared to alone, increases the processing of positive emotions (Lee, 2014). With regard to symbols and rituals, both spectators and athletes reported the importance of group-specific symbols such as flags, uniforms, logos, and team colours to reinforce group boundaries (Cottingham, 2012; Faure et al., 2014; Stieler & Germelmann, 2016), and soccer fans emphasized the role of ritualized, coordinated actions such as clapping and chanting in developing effervescence (Stieler & Germelmann, 2016).

Despite this evidence, collective emotions in sport remain an emergent research area. Future work could focus on providing conceptual evidence and processes at the group level, considering that group-based emotions essentially operate at the member level. Studies could further research the mechanisms of emotional contagion (e.g. social appraisal, Manstead & Fischer, 2017; emotional mimicry, Hess & Fischer, 2013) and, considering that these do not operate indiscriminately (e.g. only within the in-group; Weisbuch & Ambady, 2008), investigate the functionality of these processes for team coordination and social integration. This insight could then further inform the regulation of collective emotions via, for example, strategic self-construal expansion or contraction (Jones & Memmert, 2020), calculated emotional contagion (Evers, 2019; Wagstaff et al., 2012b), or tactical emphasis of collective symbols and rituals.

Emotional expressions and nonverbal behaviours

Across emotional self-regulation, interpersonal emotion regulation, and collective emotions, one crucial component seems to be the overt nonverbal expressions of emotions. In contrast to other types of nonverbal behaviours (for a comprehensive review in sport, see Furley, 2021), emotion expressions are signals and hence communicate information (Shariff & Tracy, 2011). This information can be used as the basis of one’s own emotional response, to infer performance expectations, or to motivate particular behaviours. Notably, participants’ perceptions of baseball pitchers’ anger versus happiness led to expectations of faster, more difficult, and more accurate pitches (Cheshin et al., 2016). However, participants’ expectations were not consistent with pitchers’ actual throwing speed, difficulty, or accuracy, suggesting that people may form impressions of athletes’ potential for performance based on emotional displays, but that these impressions do not necessarily correspond to the athletes’ actual performance.

Nonetheless, athletes are rated as more confident, more composed, more relaxed, happier, and less ashamed when displaying pride in soccer penalty shootout scenarios, whereas they were rated as less confident, less happy, more stressed, more excited, and more ashamed when displaying shame (Furley et al., 2015). Moreover, when participants assumed the role of a teammate observing expressions of pride, they themselves expected to be more confident and in control, feel more pride and happiness, and have better performance; whereas participants expected poorer cognitions, more shame, and lower performance when assuming the role of an opposing player (the reverse was true for expressions of shame). The implication is that expressions of pride may have positive effects on teammates and negative effects on opponents, while expressions of shame may have negative effects on teammates and positive effects on opponents. However, athletes’ emotional displays do not occur in a vacuum, and they are influenced by match outcome, social interactions, and audiences, as demonstrated by Crivelli et al. (2015) who found that judo fighters exhibited more smiling when winning a medal compared to preliminary matches, and winning fighters smiled more when socially engaging with the audience.

In addition to research examining athletes’ emotional expressions, van Kleef et al. (2019) demonstrated that players also made inferences about their team’s performance based on coaches’ emotional expressions. Specifically, athletes who perceived coach anger inferred that their team had performed poorly and they experienced more anger themselves, whereas athletes who perceived coach happiness inferred the team performed well and experienced more happiness. In general, coaches’ expressions of happiness were associated with better team performance, whereas expressions of anger were associated with worse performance. Furthermore, calmer emotional expressions by coaches are associated with more prosocial and less antisocial behaviours among adolescent athletes (Allan & Côté, 2016). However, negative emotions of moderate intensity expressed during half-time speeches were subsequently associated with athletes’ greater effort and better team performance (Staw et al., 2019). Taken together, emotional expressions have the potential to impact athletes’ cognitions, emotions, behaviours, and performance, and hence may offer avenues to regulate these outcomes.

Individual and contextual influences on the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions

Personality and emotional intelligence

Personality and preferences for emotion regulation have been posited as factors that may influence interpersonal and social aspects of the expression, experience, and regulation of emotions (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018). However, there has been relatively little research examining these individual factors to date. A notable exception is emotional intelligence, which is defined as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action’ (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, p. 189). Emotional intelligence has been studied frequently among coaches (Donoso-Morales et al., 2017; Hodgson et al., 2017; Lee, 2012; Lee & Chelladurai, 2016, 2018; Mueller et al., 2018) and also among supporting staff and administrators within sport organizations (Hings, Wagstaff, Anderson, et al., 2018; Wagstaff et al., 2012a,b). These studies suggest that high levels of emotional intelligence are valuable for effective and successful coaching and interpersonal relationships in sport. The existing research on emotional intelligence has provided confirming evidence that coaches’ emotional intelligence is associated with greater positive affectivity, lower negative affectivity, and greater genuine expression of emotion (e.g. Lee & Chelladurai, 2016).

Norms

Mirroring general emotions research (e.g. Ekman, 1973; Hochschild, 1979), one major contextual influence on the interpersonal dimensions of emotions in sport is emotion norms, that is, group-specific guidelines which explicate common or expected experiences and expressions and the violation of which entail (social) repercussions.

Cultural Norms. At the most distal level, general cultural norms seem to influence emotional experiences and expressions in sport. For example, runners jointly recovering from injuries suppressed positive emotions if their partners did not share these (Collinson, 2005), whereas winning judokas smiled more the more they engaged with the audience (Crivelli et al., 2015). Further, Uchida et al. (2009) found that athletes from individualistic cultures (i.e. the U.S.) were expected to, and did, express emotions primarily in relation to the self (e.g. self-focused emotions such as pride), whereas athletes from collectivistic cultures (i.e. Japan) expressed emotions mainly in connection to others (e.g. other-focused emotions such as gratitude), mirroring these cultures’ predominant independent versus interdependent self-construals (Triandis, 1995).

Sport-Specific Norms. Despite the applicability of general societal norms, the context of sport also has its own emotion rules. Specifically, it seems that athletes are permitted to express emotions more in a sport context, but only if these convey strength and positivity (Lilleaas, 2007). Notably, sport norms dictate that negative responses to injury or feelings of depression in male handball players are generally prohibited (Lilleaas, 2007; Mankad et al., 2009) and female gymnasts should process their disappointment quickly and in private (Snyder, 1990). Coaches too are required to adhere to a ‘culture of excellence’ (Donoso-Morales et al., 2017, p. 506) by expressing determination and toughness. Sport-specific norms also appear to guide interpersonal emotion regulation. For example, coaches work to create a culture of excellence in their teams (Donoso-Morales et al., 2017) and athletes regulate their teammates’ emotions according to prevalent emotion expression norms such as the avoidance of crying during a competition (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018).

Regardless of their content, sport-specific norms seem to be set and enforced among athletes and coaches directly, and by sport organizations and outside agents (i.e. fans, the media, and sponsors). With regard to outside agents, social media appears to be a channel by which fans can direct and reinforce athletes’ emotion expressions (Evers, 2019; Sanderson, 2016). With regard to sport organizations, the particular organizational culture seems to determine its members’ emotional behaviours (Wagstaff et al., 2012a,b). For example, the organizational culture determined the salience of gender roles (Vaccaro et al., 2011) and a masculine, high-performance climate motivated support staff to exhibit high energy and passion, yet hide experiences of sadness (Hings, Wagstaff, Anderson et al., 2018; Hings, Wagstaff, Thelwell et al., 2018). Finally, with regard to direct socialization of sport-specific emotion norms, this appears to be a task of veteran athletes and coaches (Sinden, 2010; Vaccaro et al., 2011), occurs via implicit observation and examination (Sinden, 2019), and operates often via punishment of non-conformity, for example, through verbal labelling, loss of status, or exclusion from the team (Mankad et al., 2009; Sinden, 2010).

Team Norms. At the most proximal level, emotions and emotional behaviours are influenced by the norms within a particular team. For example, team emotion norms can proscribe certain interpersonal regulation behaviours (e.g. prohibition of affect worsening; Campo et al., 2017) or the experience and expression of specific (collective) emotions (e.g. fearlessness prior to a match; Gallmeier, 1987; Giazitzoglu, 2020). Consequently, team emotion norms also guide athletes’ self-regulation and interpersonal emotion regulation efforts towards these target states (Friesen, Devonport, et al., 2013; Gallmeier, 1987), potentially because non-conformity is also punished at the team level (Giazitzoglu, 2020). In addition to these sanctions, intimidation and peer leaders’ emotion expressions appear to set and reinforce descriptive and injunctive emotion norms within a team (e.g. not to express one’s emotions freely, Petitta et al., 2015; Tamminen, Palmateer, et al., 2016). Nonetheless, current knowledge about the development, content, and consequences of emotion norms at the team level is comparatively limited. This may provide an important avenue for future research, considering, for example, the motivation- and adherence-related costs of experience-expression discrepancies or the use of norms as an avenue to optimize (collective) emotions and intra-team regulatory behaviours. In advancing research and theory on these topics, it is important to consider the interconnectedness of the factors and processes identified herein.

Roles

Emotional expectations also exist at the individual level as part of actors’ role descriptions, that is, the behavioural patterns they are expected to enact in social situations (Eys et al., 2019). In sport, expectations regarding the experience and expression of emotion appear to be specified in particular as part of gender, professional, and team roles.

Gender Roles. Gender roles seem to prescribe particular emotional behaviours; specifically, men may be ‘allowed’ to express emotions more in sport than other life domains (Lilleaas, 2007). Nonetheless, across sports, these expressions appear limited to displays of hypermasculinity, encouraging aggression and jocularity, yet forbidding expressions of fear, suffering, or affection towards teammates (Giazitzoglu, 2020; Lilleaas, 2007; Steinfeldt et al., 2011; Vaccaro et al., 2011). However, the lack of expressed affection among teammates may incur costs for both members and teams (i.e. reduced satisfaction, relatedness, and cohesion; Steinfeldt et al., 2011). In addition, there is some initial evidence suggesting that gender might also qualify the extent to which athletes are influenced by the emotions of peer leaders within the team, with females reporting being influenced more by leaders’ emotions than their male counterparts (Cotterill et al., 2020).

Professional Roles. The second type of role that seems to stipulate particular emotion-related behaviours is actors’ professional role. For example, both referees and support staff perceived the interpersonal regulation of athletes’ emotions (e.g. down-regulating athletes’ anger, inducing enthusiasm) to be a part of their role responsibilities and necessary to work effectively (Friesen et al., 2017; Hings, Wagstaff, Anderson et al., 2018; Hings, Wagstaff, Thelwell et al., 2018). Athletes too felt that their type of sport dictated certain emotion expressions; for example, the ‘Life Saver image, the ironman image’ (p. 8) that went along with being a surfer demanded the suppression of any negative emotions and the constant display of positivity (Mankad et al., 2009).

Team Roles. Finally, the roles actors occupy within a team seem to specify expectations also regarding their experience, expression, and, in particular, the regulation of emotions. The most prominent roles in this context are peer leaders and coaches. For example, coaches feel as if they need to express positive emotions and calmness, and sometimes disappointment but not anger as part of their role (Lee et al., 2018). Conversely, a large component of peer leaders’ roles appears to be the effective regulation of their teammates’ emotions (Imholte et al., 2019). Accordingly, peer leaders pay particular attention to their teammates’ emotional states (Wolf et al., 2018) and engage in interpersonal emotion regulation often and pervasively (Imholte et al., 2019; Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018; Wolf et al., 2018), for example, to induce role-congruent emotions or ensure optimal member and team functioning (Friesen, Devonport, et al., 2013). In addition, leaders’ emotions seem to be especially likely to spread (Cotterill et al., 2020; van Kleef et al., 2019), potentially due to leaders’ strategic interpersonal emotion regulation or athletes’ social appraisal.

Role attributes besides leadership also seem to qualify athletes’ emotional behaviours. As such, the appropriateness of interpersonal emotion regulation appears to increase with athlete status (e.g. members would not regulate the emotions of a teammate with higher status; Campo et al., 2017; Swary, 2020). Further, athletes’ playing positions seem to prescribe certain regulatory behaviours such as goalkeepers being mostly removed from intra-team emotion regulation (Friesen et al., 2015), the skip on a curling team (i.e. the team’s strategic and tactical decision-maker) being tasked with the most interpersonal regulation (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013), and substitute players serving calming and supporting roles (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018). Finally, teammates’ relational closeness appears to qualify interpersonal emotional influence and regulation (Wolf et al., 2018) with close friends being the first to congratulate or console an athlete (Snyder, 1990) and friends or occupants of similar playing positions regulating each other more frequently (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018). The idea of emotions constituting a part of team-members’ (formal or informal) role descriptions provides an intriguing avenue for future research when considering how emotions would tie into different aspects of role involvement (e.g. clarity, efficacy, acceptance; Eys et al., 2019). In addition, a pressing future research direction would be the inclusion of greater gender diversity in the investigation of (gender) role influences on emotions in sport.

Situational & temporal dynamics

The interpersonal dimensions of emotions in sport are subject to temporal and situational dynamics. First, interpersonal emotion phenomena are dynamic by definition. As such, phenomena such as emotional contagion (Petitta & Jiang, 2020; Swary, 2020; Weisbuch & Ambady, 2008; Wergin et al., 2018; Wolf et al., 2018) necessarily unfold over time, which can maintain collective team collapse through building anxiety and escalating anger (Wergin et al., 2018) or prompt subsequent compensatory regulation (Filho, 2020). Similarly, collective effervescence (Cottingham, 2012; Faure et al., 2014; Stieler & Germelmann, 2016; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020; Zumeta et al., 2016) is an innately dynamic process characterized by interaction and growing emotionality. Furthermore, because emotions are responses to relevant events (Jones & Uphill, 2012), they change if the events change, as well as with changes in individual versus collective construals of actors’ selves and relevant events. Notably, spectators experienced more positive and less negative group-based emotions if their favoured teams performed better in a single match (Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020), across a tournament (Jones et al., 2012), or throughout a season (Crisp et al., 2007; Wann et al., 1994).

Another way in which the interpersonal dimensions of emotions in sport are dynamic relates to the ways in which emotional self- and interpersonal regulation change, and the effectiveness of these strategies depends on context and timing (Friesen et al., 2015; Wolf et al., 2018). For one, the setting of competition versus non-competition/practice seems to impact both the magnitude and type of athletes’ and coaches’ interpersonal emotion regulation efforts. Specifically, because of the faster pace of competitions, athletes engaged in less interpersonal emotion regulation during as compared to after matches or in practices (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018). Similarly, during competitions, coaches’ favoured interpersonal emotion regulation strategy was response modulation (i.e. positive reinforcement) whereas during practice it was situation modification (Braun & Tamminen, 2019). For another, athletes’ and coaches’ interpersonal emotion regulation seems to change over time: athletes’ efforts to worsen teammates’ affect decreased with an approaching competition whereas their efforts to improve teammates’ affect dropped shortly after a competition (Tamminen et al., 2019). In addition, athletes strategically increased the volume and tempo of their locker-room music (to regulate their collective emotions) the closer they came to match time (Swary, 2020). Coaches also modify their speeches to invoke different types of regret before, during, and after matches (i.e. regret reduction; Turman, 2005, 2007). In fact, coaches chose different regret messages during the regular season as compared to the post-season matches (Turman, 2005). The time in the season also changed athletes’ emotion regulation with more and better interpersonal emotion regulation and less self-censoring as the team had gotten to know each other better (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013).

Finally, actors’ self-regulation and interpersonal emotion regulation change in line with emotion norms and emotion-related role descriptions that vary across time and context. Specifically, across a competition day, norms for ice hockey players’ emotions follow a highly scripted routine: calmness and low emotionality prior to warm-up, sustained high-arousal positive emotions during the match, and outcome-appropriate expressions thereafter (Gallmeier, 1987). Similarly, rugby players’ masculine gender roles prescribe different emotion expressions depending on time and space with fearlessness being demanded prior to the match, aggressiveness on the field, and jocularity at the pub afterwards (Giazitzoglu, 2020). Although the situational and temporal factors influencing the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport have not been the explicit focus within any one particular study, the current review has clearly identified that these emotional phenomena are contextually- and temporally-sensitive and warrant further investigation.

Current issues and future directions

Terminological and conceptual overlap

Overall, we view it as a positive signal that there is a plethora of emotional concepts and phenomena that have been investigated across multiple disciplines of inquiry; yet, one consequence of this approach is the potential for overlap that exists between concepts. We have provided an overview of various definitions and references to affective processes used within the literature to illustrate the similarities and differences in the way these terms and definitions have been used (see Table 3). It remains an important conceptual and theoretical issue to untangle the boundaries, overlap, and hierarchical structure between these concepts, and for researchers to clearly define and operationalize the concepts they are studying. For example, it is not clear at what point emotional self-regulation or intrinsic emotion regulation (Gross & Thompson, 2007) is considered to be enacted as emotional labour (Hochschild, 1979), and it is also unclear how emotional labour is distinct from interpersonal emotion regulation (Grandey & Melloy, 2017). In addition, there is considerable conceptual overlap between collective emotions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999; von Scheve & Ismer, 1979), emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994), and collective effervescence (Durkheim, 1965). Similarly, the term interpersonal emotion regulation has been used to refer to deliberate (Braun & Tamminen, 2019; Friesen, Devonport, et al., 2013; Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018; Tamminen, Gaudreau, et al., 2016; 2019) as well as non-deliberate verbal and nonverbal actions to influence others’ emotions (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013), whereas other sources (Campo et al., 2017; Gross & Thompson, 2007) refer to these actions as extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. Confusing matters further, the term interpersonal regulation has also been used to refer to strategies that individuals use to regulate their own emotions by social or interpersonal means (e.g. seeking out the company of others and disclosing emotional experiences to make oneself feel better; Williams et al., 2018; Britton & Polman, 2022). Finally, some studies have classified or measured emotion regulation strategies based on their general aim (e.g. affect-improving versus affect-worsening; e.g. Tamminen et al., 2019) and others as a function of the specific actions (e.g. verbal versus behavioural strategies; e.g. Friesen et al., 2015). Thus, one key issue arising from our review is that there is a need for a greater terminological integration and clarity in these areas to avoid perpetuating ‘jingle-jangle’ fallacies and imprecise measurement (see Weidman et al., 2017).

Table 3. Overview of interpersonal affective processes or phenomena with examples of various definitions and terms used in the literature.

Affective Process/ Phenomena	Theoretical Frameworks	Examples of Definition(s) and References to Affective Process
Collective Effervescence	Collective Effervescence (Durkheim, 1965)	‘Collective effervescence is an amplified, excited reaction made possible when a group of people experience something emotional together (Durkheim, 1965).’ (Faure et al., 2014, p. 2)
		‘Thus, collective efficacy is a process involving behaviors and interactions observed among members of the group.’ (…) ‘The effervescence that develops in a collective gathering can be described as a multifaceted process of social synchronization.’ (Zumeta et al., 2016, p. 2)
		'The sharing of an emotional experience and common mood was best demonstrated by my observance of collective gestures and verbal responses of the crowd. More specifically, this involved the expression, verbally and through gestures, of positive emotions (e.g., fervent clapping, smiling, cheering, high-fives)' (Cottingham, 2012, p. 174).
Collective Emotions	Collective Emotions (Smith et al., 2007; Goldenberg et al., 2014)	‘Collective emotions refer to the collective as the entity that experiences [or better, exhibits] the emotion’ (Goldenberg et al., 2014, p. 582, brackets added). (Sullivan, 2018, p. 2)
		‘If fans have a positive social identity, we would expect a positive correlation between fanship and collective happiness.’ (Reyson & Branscombe, 2010, p. 184)
Group-based Emotions	Group-based Emotions (Goldenberg et al., 2014)	‘Emotional experience in group settings is influenced by how the individual perceives similarity among individuals. Group level emotions and emotional ties among group members are important social functions for ensuring group stability (Keltner & Haidt, 1999; Parkinson, 1996).’ (Stieler & Germelmann, 2016, p. 5)
		‘Group-based and collective emotions explicitly concern the social dynamics of emotional experiences. Group-based emotions refer to emotions that are tied to an individual's identification with a particular social group/team and they are thought to occur in response to events that are deemed relevant to the group as a whole (Goldenberg, et al., 2016; Goldenberg, et al., 2014).’ (Tamminen et al., 2016, p. 29)
		‘Sport is an entertainment genre with grand appeal … likely due to strong affective impacts: watching a favored team win improves moods, while watching them lose causes a mood drop (Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020, p. 237)
Emotion Contagion	Emotional Contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994)	‘Interpersonal mood induction may partly be the consequence of a nonconscious process known as primitive emotional contagion, in which people automatically mimic other people's expressive displays and hence experience similar emotions (Hatfield et al., 1994).’ (Totterdell, 2000, p. 848)
		‘Emotional contagion is defined as the transfer of emotion and moods within a group (Barsade, 2002).’ (Barsade, 2002; Wergin et al., 2018, p. 8)
		‘Athletes spoke of contagion in terms of their teammates’ pregame attitudes and precompetitive psychological states transmitting or spreading to their own precompetitive states.’ (Wolf et al., 2018, p. 194)
		‘Emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994) is the involuntary process through which humans automatically detect and absorb emotions of others around them’ (Petitta & Jiang, 2020, p. 4)
Emotional Synchrony	Shared Zones of Optimal Functioning (Filho, 2020) Emotional Synchrony (Páez et al., 2015)	‘teammates working on a task tend to have their psycho–bio–social responses (e.g. heart rate, respiratory rate, brain waves and networks) in sync (i.e. locked in time), and the higher the level of “sharedness” the higher the synchronization tends to be (Filho, 2019).’ (Filho, 2020, p. 331)
		‘Due to the ease with which emotions are mirrored, shared and spread among people who are co-present, a situation of emotional synchrony develops, thus entailing emotions and perceptions of similarity and unity: ‘we felt a strong, shared emotion,’ ‘we feel the same, we are the same, we are one’ (Collins, 2004; Rossano, 2012; Páez et al., 2013; von Scheve & Ismer, 2013). What is essential is that individuals are gathered together, that common feelings are felt and that they are expressed in common acts. Group members need to be in communion, to be united in the same mind and in the same action (Páez et al., 2015).’ (Zumeta et al., 2016, p. 3)
Collective Rituals	Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel et al., 1979)	‘According to Durkheim’s (1976) perspective, collective gatherings and rituals are defined as a set of actions and utterances aimed to achieve a social goal.’ (…) ‘These actions are not always instrumental or directly related to the desired goal, but they imply shared emotions, the expression of societal values and intended social relations within a community (Paez & Rimé, 2014).’ (Vargas-Salfate et al., 2020, p. 2)
Emotion Norms	Emotion Labor (Hochschild, 1979, 1983)	‘The identification of individuals behaving in accordance with expectations and norms regarding behavior and the expression of emotion are supported by the work of Hochschild on emotional labor. Hochschild (1979) coined the term emotional labor to illustrate the actions workers took when guided by strict emotion display rules by their role in the workplace.’ (Hochschild, 1983; Wagstaff, Fletcher, & Hanton, 2012a, p. 43; Butler & Gross, 2009; Frijda, 1986; Rime, 2009)
		‘The scripts that guide emotions are described by Hochschild (1983) as “feeling rules” – the emotional norms that are expected in a given situation. When there is a gap between the socially acceptable feeling rules and the actual feeling, the individual attempts to control the inappropriate feelings through introspection.’ (Snyder, 1990, p. 255)
Emotional Intelligence	Emotional Intelligence (Mayer et al., 2016)	‘The emotional abilities identified (i.e. emotional awareness, emotional understanding, and emotional management) demonstrate similarities and overlap with Mayer and Salovey’s ability model of emotional intelligence (EI). Salovey and Mayer proposed a definition of EI as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action’ (p. 189).’ (Hodgson, Butt, & Maynard, 2017, p. 448)
		‘Mayer and Salovey (1997) proposed that emotional intelligence is composed of (a) perceiving emotions in the self and others, (b) understanding of emotions, (c) regulating emotion in the self, and (d) utilization of emotion to facilitate thoughts. Each of these forms of emotional intelligence might render individuals less vulnerable to emotional exhaustion in that emotionally intelligent coaches are more likely to understand that they engage in surface acting only with the view to enhance the performance of their athletes and teams.’ Lee & Chelladurai (2016, p. 173)
		‘Emotional intelligence … involves identifying emotions and using this information to guide one’s behaviors (Goleman, 1998).’ (Donoso-Morales et al., 2017, p. 510)
		‘Emotional intelligence [is] the mental ability related to one’s emotional experiences (Mayer et al., 2016)’ Lee & Chelladurai (2018, p. 394)
Emotional Labour	Emotional Labour (Grandey & Gabriel, 2015; Grandey et al., 2013; Hochschild, 1979 Wharton & Erickson, 1993)	‘Emotional labour involves regulating and managing emotional states and expressions according to “feeling rules” while in paid employment, so that consumers get a suitable experience (Ashforth and Humphrey 1993; Grandey, 2000; Hochschild 1983).’ (Evers, 2019, p. 1693)
		‘The need to manage emotions to fit with the expectations and social norms of the sport organization aligns with the concept of emotional labor. Emotional labor has been defined as, “the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for the organizational goals.”’ (Larner et al., 2017, p. 2104)
		‘According to Grandey, Diefendorff, and Rupp (2013), emotional labor is defined as, “emotion regulation performed in response to job-based emotional requirements in order to produce emotion toward – and to evoke emotion from – another person to achieve organizational goals.” (p. 18).’ (…) ‘Researchers have observed three types of emotional expression: authentic expression, whereby genuine feelings are felt and displayed at work; surface acting, where employees feign the desired emotional expressions (i.e. suppressing, faking and amplifying emotions), and; deep acting, where employees try to create the desired feelings to be expressed (Gabriel, Acosta, & Grandey, 2013).’ (Hings et al., 2018, p. 67)
		‘Emotion management involves suppressing or evoking particular emotions so as to resonate with culturally defined feeling rules (Hochschild 1979).’ (Vaccaro et al., 2011, p. 417)
		‘These efforts on the part of service employees is called emotional labor defined as “the regulation of both feeling and expression of emotions to achieve organizational goals”’ (Grandey, 2000, p. 97). Similarly, Grandey (2000) spoke of display rules that specified the emotions employees should display and those they should suppress in their interactions with customers to be effective on their jobs.’ (Lee et al., 2018, p. 953)
		‘Social performances were also very much emotional activities [involving] the challenge of suppressing and/or presenting certain emotions that he felt would benefit the situation.’ (Nelson et al., 2013, p. 477)
		‘Through the 1980s, theorists (Hochschild, 1979; Jaggar & Bordo, 1989) challenged the division of public vs. private, as they understood emotions not to be simply located in the individual, or privately experienced, but rather also to reflect linguistically-embedded cultural values and rules.’ (Sinden, 2010, p. 244)
Sledging	Process Model of Emotion Regulation (Gross, 1998)	‘In particular, “sledging” in cricket (Joseph & Cramer, 2011) is identified as a tactic aimed at gaining a psychological advantage over opponents through cognitive interference and emotion induction.’ (Davis et al., 2018, p. 137)
		‘Sledging, a form of verbal antisocial behaviour, defined as behaviour intended to harm or disadvantage another’ (Ring et al., 2019, p. 871)
Interpersonal Emotion Regulation	Self- and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (Niven et al., 2009) Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Framework (Niven et al., 2007) Emotions as Social Information Model (EASI; van Kleef, 2009) Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Emotion Regulation (Gross & Thompson, 2007)	‘Interpersonal emotion regulation has been defined as deliberate attempts by one social entity known as the “agent” to change the emotions or moods of another social entity known as the “target” (Gross & Thompson, 2007).’ (Friesen, Devonport et al., 2013, 2017, p. 203)
		‘Emotion regulation is defined as “the process by which individuals influence which emotion they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 1998, p. 275). Within the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998; Gross & Thompson, 2007), it is stated that emotions can be self-regulated but also interpersonally regulated (Netzer, Van Kleef, & Tamir, 2015) – the latter as applying to an emotion regulated by others as well as the regulation of others’ emotions (Zaki & Williams, 2013).’ (Campo et al., 2017, p. 380)
		‘One approach to classifying the strategies that individuals use to regulate their emotions is Gross’ (1998) process model, which includes antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation strategies. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation occurs prior to the occurrence of an emotion and includes four regulatory processes: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, and cognitive change.’ (Braun & Tamminen, 2019, p. 38)
		‘In the present paper we follow the call of Van Kleef et al. (2011) of exploring the EASI model in the context of sport performance by investigating the interpersonal effects of the post-performance expressions of pride and shame on competitive (opponents) and cooperative others (team-members) in the soccer penalty shootout situation.’ (Furley et al., 2015, p. 2)
		‘Emotion regulation actions to try to improve the emotions of others may include strategies such as giving someone helpful advice, doing something nice with someone, or listening to their problems (other-improving ERS). Emotion regulation actions to try to worsen others’ emotions may include acting annoyed toward someone, telling someone about their shortcomings, and explaining to someone how they had hurt others to make them feel worse (other-worsening ERS). This conceptual framework moves beyond an intrapersonal perspective to propose that individuals play an active role.’ (Tamminen, Gaudreau et al., 2016, p. 542)
		‘This category represents verbal IER strategies whereby the agent is attempting to manage the internal appraisals of the target individual.’ (…) ‘These strategies include behavioural attempts to regulate others’ emotions by managing the appraisals of the target player.’ (Friesen et al., 2015, p. 147)
		‘Athletes could try to influence the emotions of many different people in a sporting situation (e.g. trying to anger an opponent, console a teammate, or guilt an official), or might find their own emotions influenced by others.’ (Friesen et al., 2019, p. 105)
		‘To assess athletes’ reports of IER with their teammates, researchers have relied on Niven et al. (2011) framework that distinguishes between strategies that are intended to improve or worsen one’s own affect and actions to influence the affect of others (e.g, self-improving or other-improving IER and self-worsening or other-worsening IER).’ (Tamminen et al., 2019, p. 2)
		‘Pescosolido (2002), for example, suggested that emergent leaders provide model responses to ambiguous situations. Similarly, Lord et al. suggested that they use group norms to influence group behavior by managing their own and the group’s emotional response.’ (Imholte et al., 2019, p. 178)
		‘Within Niven, Totterdell, and Holman’s (2009) conceptual framework, IER strategies are classified depending on whether they are intended to improve or worsen another person’s affect.’ (Palmateer & Tamminen, 2018, p. 322)
		‘How a coach chooses to frame this feedback can directly influence the attributions athletes make about their athletic experience, or even produce feelings of regret as they reflect upon what “could have” or “should have happened” (Turman, 2005).’ (Turman, 2007, p. 334)
		‘Allied with recent conceptualizations that emotions are socially functional (see Butler & Gross, 2009; Rime, 2009), there is the view that they are amenable to management or regulation to enhance psychosocial dynamics (i.e. inter-personal relationships). Herein the social sharing of emotion is a learnable necessity that enables us to transact with others (Rime, 2009), whereby emotions trigger controllable responses that help us to self-regulate (Frijda, 1986) and allow for behavioral norms to over-ride automatic or impulsive emotional reactions (Grandey, 2000).’ (Wagstaff, Fletcher, & Hanton, 2012a, p. 269)
		‘Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies are assumed to serve two goals, namely instrumental, aimed to achieve a particular goal, and hedonic, used to promote pleasant emotions (Tamir, 2009).’ (Mueller et al., 2018, p. 157)
		‘We used the term emotional self-regulation to refer to the use of automatic or deliberate strategies to initiate, maintain, modify or display one’s own emotions (Gross, 2008; Lane, Beedie, Jones, Uphill, & Devonport, 2012; Niven et al., 2011), and we used the term interpersonal emotion regulation to refer to athletes’ deliberate and non-deliberate verbal and nonverbal actions which influence others’ emotions (Niven et al., 2009).’ (Tamminen & Crocker, 2013, p. 738)
Emotion Expression in Social Contexts	Cognitive Motivational Relational Theory (Lazarus, 1999) Intergroup Emotions Theory (Mackie et al., 2000; Smith & Mackie, 2015) Social-Functional Approach to Emotions (Keltner & Haidt, 1999; Parkinson, 1996) Socio-Functional Models of Emotion (Fischer & Manstead, 2008) Emotions as Social Information Model (EASI; van Kleef, 2009)	‘Thinking about the self as an individual or as a team member has consequences for the emotions players feels (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Tamminen, Palmateer et al., 2016).’ (Campo, Champely et al., 2019, p. 54)
		‘According to intergroup emotions theory (IET; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Mackie & Smith, 1998), emotions depend on such social categorization. Categorization at the personal or I level results in personal appraisal and individual emotions, whereas group categorization at either of the other two levels results in group-level appraisal and group-level emotions.’ (Campo, Mackie et al., 2019, p. 380)
		‘Indeed, according to Intergroup Emotion Theory (IET), people not only feel and act as a person but also as a member of a group. Therefore, emotions may change along the activation of different social identities (i.e. change in the group to which a person belongs).’ (Campo et al., 2018, p. 630)
		‘Such emotional expressions may be observed by others, who may in turn respond to them. This idea lies at the heart of social-functional approaches to emotion, which posit that emotional expressions help coordinate social interaction by influencing those who observe them.
		‘Thalberg (1977) argued that perceptions influence both individuals’ emotions and behavior. In applying this theory, one can conjecture that fans’ perceptions about their favorite sport team translate into felt emotions, which, in turn, make them act in certain ways.’ (Chang et al., 2017, p. 32)
		‘A growing body of research speaks to the social consequences of emotional expressions (for reviews, see van Kleef et al., 2011, 2012). In particular, studies across a variety of domains have demonstrated that observers use others’ emotional expressions to gain insight into the expresser’s goals and desires and to inform their understanding of situations.’ (Cheshin et al., 2016, p. 2)
		‘In this article, using intergroup emotions theory (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Smith, 1993, 1999), we conceptualize soccer-related social identity processes in terms of differing emotional responses to an ingroup threat (for example, the team’s defeat), which may occur in terms of differing levels of commitment (i.e. social identification) to that ingroup.’ (Crisp et al., 2007, p. 10)
		‘While acknowledging the biological, “natural” dimensions of emotion which interweave with the social to produce embodied emotion (Elias, 1991, this article focuses on social interactional concerns, in particular the dimensions of the emotion management, emotion work and emotional intersubjectivity of two distance runners who suffered very similar experiences of relatively long-term knee injuries.’ (Collinson, 2005, p. 222)
		‘These researchers have used qualitative techniques in order to discover and understand the social processes associated with what Hochschild (1979) has called “emotion-work.” [Athletes] labor, in a manner consistent with instructions from socialization agents, to anticipate emotions appropriate for the situation.’ (Gallmeier, 1987, p. 347)
		‘Before the game starts, athletes look to their coach to help them prepare physically and mentally. For instance, a coach’s pregame speech can affect the athletes’ efficacy and performance (Vargas & Short, 2011; Vargas-Tonsing & Guan, 2007) through the use of both informational content (Vargas-Tonsing, 2009) and an emotionally persuasive speech (Vargas-Tonsing & Bartholomew, 2006).’ (Allain et al., 2018, p. 2)
		‘According to Facial Expression Program (FEP, Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971; see Russell & Fernández-Dols, 1997), smiles – specifically Duchenne smiles – are produced when the person is happy. Conversely, according to Behavioral Ecology Theory (BET, Fridlund, 1994), smiles, including Duchenne smiles, are tools the person uses during social interaction.’ (Crivelli et al., 2015, p. 52)

Dimensions of affective phenomena and areas for future research

As indicated initially, our focus was on the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions. Across studies, the main social emotional phenomena that sport psychology researchers have addressed are emotional self-regulation in a social context, emotional labour, interpersonal emotion regulation, and collective emotions. Moreover, across studies, it emerged that these phenomena can be mapped and distinguished across four dimensions, namely their focus (internal versus external) and their deliberateness (deliberate versus non-deliberate; see Figure 2a), as well as their specificity (discrete versus diffuse emotions), and level (individual, dyadic, or group level; see Figure 2b). For example, interpersonal emotion regulation is generally conceived as a deliberate form of emotion regulation that typically focuses on the regulation of others’ emotions, although a commonly-used measure of interpersonal emotion regulation also assesses emotional self-regulation (Niven et al., 2011). Collective emotional processes occupy a different space in the diagrams, as they are non-deliberate and typically concern the experience and expression of emotions, rather than the deliberate regulation of emotions.

Figure 2. Mapping of concepts related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport. In Figure 2a, concepts are presented along dimensions according to the intrinsic or extrinsic focus of the emotional concept/process, and according to whether the emotional process is conceptualized as deliberate or non-deliberate. In Figure 2b, concepts are presented along dimensions according to the level of the emotional concept/process (individual, dyadic, or group), and according to whether the affective phenomena is considered discrete (e.g. emotions) or diffuse (e.g. moods).

By mapping dimensions of emotional phenomena along these dimensions, it is possible to identify overlap and synergies among phenomena as well as key gaps and areas for future research. From Figure 2a, it is notable that there has been limited research on non-deliberate intrinsic or extrinsic emotional regulation, as well as research on the regulation of collective emotions. Hence, future research could examine how non-deliberate intrinsic and extrinsic regulatory processes function in sport and how they may impact athletes’ sport performance, and researchers could also examine whether and how collective emotions are regulated in sport contexts. By reviewing Figure 2b, it is evident that the concepts that have been investigated to date have focused on more diffuse moods rather than on the interpersonal experience, expression, or regulation of specific, discrete emotions (for studies that have examined discrete emotions, see Crisp et al., 2007; Furley et al., 2015; Ring et al., 2019; Staw et al., 2019; van Kleef et al., 2019).

Need for theoretical development and further phenomenological evidence

The lack of formal theories has been noted across the psychological sciences (Robinaugh et al., 2021), and there is a similar lack of formal, integrative theory for representing and predicting the phenomena related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport. This current ‘theory crisis’ (Eronen & Bringmann, 2021) results in ‘weak explanations and wide predictions’ (Grahek et al., 2021, p. 804) and the study of phenomena without theoretical integration (Borsboom et al., 2021). Hence, efforts should be made to rigorously construct, develop, and test theoretical models that explain observed phenomena or behaviours precisely and universally. Approaches for improving theory construction, development, and testing include theory mapping (Gray, 2017), theory construction methodology (Borsboom et al., 2021), construct validation and computational modelling (Grahek et al., 2021), and formal theory (Robinaugh et al., 2021). While the integration of interpersonal emotional phenomena into a singular theory is beyond the purpose of this paper, we have provided a diagram (Figure 3) to illustrate the interconnectedness of the concepts studied in this review.

Figure 3. Conceptual model displaying the interconnectedness of interpersonal emotional phenomena. The central three circles contain concepts related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions, which are influenced by factors such as personality, roles, norms, and culture. These processes are influenced by contextual factors related to practice or competition and are also dynamic and change over time.

The results herein provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on the research conducted to date and a map of the constructs and theories used (Gray, 2017), which may be a first step toward more concerted efforts to develop an integrated theory of interpersonal emotional processes in sport. For example, using theory construction methodology (Borsboom et al., 2021), researchers would first identify empirical phenomena that are the intended target of explanation; the present review may serve to fulfil this step. Subsequently, researchers would develop a prototheory and theoretical principles that aim to explain the phenomena of interest; these are then used to develop a formal model, and the explanatory adequacy of the model is investigated and the overall adequacy of the theory is evaluated. An alternative method, theory mapping, provides guidance on synthesizing studies and developing theories (Gray, 2017): first, associations between constructs are identified, followed by explanation of moderating factors and identification of fundamental elements of the theory. Next, theory mapping identifies varieties or examples of fundamental elements, and numbers and notes are used to provide supplemental details and explanations.

In addition to theory-building and theory-testing, there continues to be value in conducting programmatic research (cf. Zanna & Fazio, 1982) to develop further phenomenological evidence for the concepts identified in this review, and to accumulate evidence to account for how these effects work (e.g. mediating processes) and the conditions under which they operate (e.g. boundary conditions and moderating processes). In this review, we have noted several areas for future research pertaining to the phenomena that have been investigated to date.

Need for research among additional populations

Another key issue in advancing our understanding of the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport is the investigation of additional populations with greater diversity in participants’ gender, age or developmental stage, culture, and other socio-demographic backgrounds. There has been limited research examining the experiences of female athletes; consequently, there has been little opportunity to explore potential gender differences. One recent exception is a study by Cotterill et al. (2020) thatprovided evidence that female athletes are more likely to report being influenced by the emotions of leaders on their teams. This finding provides a useful point of departure for examining possible reasons why female athletes may be influenced more strongly by the emotional expressions of leaders within their teams and the possible implications for these results. Additionally, researchers have not examined differences between female athletes with male coaches compared to female athletes with female coaches, although participants’ reports indicate that coaches’ emotional expressions may have different effects depending on their gender (Braun & Tamminen, 2019). Thus, some gaps remain in the literature concerning the potential consequences of male and female athletes’ reactions to the emotional expressions and regulatory efforts of male and female coaches and leaders, as well as the norms and role expectations that may influence these effects. A similar limitation of the research conducted to date is that it has focused primarily on adult populations. Adopting a developmental perspective would be useful to consider young athletes’ developing socio-emotional capacities, coaches and parents’ modelling of emotional expressions, the socialization of emotion regulation strategies, and the development of emotional norms in sport.

Need for applied research

There has been limited applied or intervention research conducted thus far, and while more basic research is needed to develop a strong foundation for making applied recommendations, we feel there are some particularly fruitful avenues for conducting applied sport psychology research. First, it may be valuable to determine whether athletes’ emotional self- and interpersonal regulatory capacities can be enhanced or developed through intervention research (e.g. what are the best ways of enhancing athletes’ capacity for interpersonal emotion regulation in sport?). A second focus could be on coach education and training regarding the impact of emotion expressions on athletes’ performance and their regulation of athletes’ emotions. Third, related to this, applied research is needed to determine best approaches for harnessing functional collective emotions (of athletes, but also among fans), and strategies to stop the spread of dysfunctional collective emotions (e.g. which collective states are helpful for which outcomes and in which situations, and who can best stop unhelpful emotions from transferring among teammates?).

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to provide a comprehensive scoping review of the literature related to the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport. Due to the interconnectedness of these emotion-related phenomena, we sought to include research on topics such as collective emotions, group-based emotions, the impact of emotion expressions on others, and interpersonal emotion regulation. The current paper provides a comprehensive overview of the studies that have been conducted to date, a map of these phenomena across pertinent dimensions (see Figure 2) and a conceptualization of the interconnectedness of these phenomena (Figure 3), and directions for future research. Key issues identified in this review include the need for theoretical integration of concepts and programmatic research to systematically examine the processes and effects of the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport; better terminological clarity across studies; an acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of these emotional phenomena; a need for more research with additional populations (e.g. youth athletes, female athletes, etc.); and a need for applied research and intervention in sport settings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science, project number 35729.