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Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Department or Program Affiliation

Kinesiology: Sport and Exercise Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Health and Human Development

First Advisor

Keeler, Linda

Second Advisor

Arthur-Cameselle, Jessyca

Third Advisor

Washburn, Nick (Nicholas S.)

Fourth Advisor

MacDonald, Samantha L.

Abstract

The basic psychological need of relatedness (i.e., a sense of belonging; Deci & Ryan, 2002) has had positive relationships with performance outcomes (Gillet et al., 2009; Raabe & Zakrajsek, 2017) and perceived performance (Lourenço et al., 2022), yet the effects of relatedness on objective team performance is limited (Campbell, 2018). Although, a close relationship between relatedness and the widely studied topic of social cohesion has been found (Erikstad et al., 2018; Nascimento Júnior et al., 2019). Team-building interventions have successfully increased team cohesion on intercollegiate sport teams (e.g., Stevens & Bloom, 2003), yet there are limited team building interventions that are based on theory such as experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to explore the effects of a team-building activity with theoretically grounded processing on relatedness and cohesion. Participants were nine adult male soccer players (Mage = 19.78) who engaged in a passing drill in a pretest/posttest design as part of a newly formed group. The intervention was a 20-minute, team-building activity with experiential learning model guided processing (Kolb, 1984) that targeted the basic psychological need of relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2002). At posttest, participants had increased perceived cohesion (p = .006, d = 1.22) and relatedness satisfaction (p = .007, d = 1.19), and decreased relatedness frustration (p = < .001, d = 1.79). Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between relatedness satisfaction and perceived cohesion at pretest (r = .75) and at posttest (r = .71), and a medium correlation between relatedness frustration and perceived cohesion at both pretest (r = -.63) and posttest (r = -.62). Lastly, an exploratory, non-inferential statistics analysis indicated that objective performance on a soccer passing drill may have decreased after the intervention and the majority of participants (55.55%) perceived a subjective increase in their performance. The results of the study indicate that a team building activity with guided experiential learning processing may cause positive changes in relatedness and cohesion in male soccer players, but further research is needed on effects on performance.

Type

Text

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1525185728

Subject – LCSH

Experiential learning; Soccer teams; Passing (Soccer); Social groups; Relatedness (Psychology)

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

masters theses

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

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