The Science of Sports Team Dynamics: Cohesion, Loafing, and Locker-Room Hierarchy

Key findings

1. 1981

   Cohesion in sport groups is multidimensional, splitting into task cohesion (unity toward shared objectives) and social cohesion (interpersonal attraction), each assessable at the group and individual level — a departure from treating cohesion as one uniform quality. ↗

2. 2002

   Pooling 46 studies and 164 effect sizes, cohesion shows a significant moderate-to-large relationship with performance in sport teams — stronger in refereed publications and for female teams than for male teams. ↗

3. 2002

   As a co-author of the field's operational model of role ambiguity, contributed the finding that unclear scope, behavioral, evaluative, and consequence-related expectations — across both offensive and defensive roles — predict poorer role performance in interdependent sport teams. ↗

Key findings

1. 2003

   Athletes' role ambiguity was linked to lower satisfaction across multiple facets of the sport experience, including individual and team performance, ability utilization, and team integration. ↗

2. 2003

   In a multilevel, season-long study, first-year athletes reported greater role ambiguity than veterans early in the season, a gap that narrowed by season's end as roles became clearer to everyone. ↗

Key findings

1. 2002

   Proposed and validated a four-dimension, two-context (offense/defense) operational model of role ambiguity in sport teams, providing the basis for the Role Ambiguity Scale used across the field. ↗

2. 2005

   Coaches' training-and-instruction and positive-feedback leadership behaviors were associated with athletes' subsequently lower perceptions of role ambiguity, pointing to leadership style as a lever for reducing it. ↗