Social norms and emotion regulation among youth athletes

Abstract

Adolescence is a critical developmental period within which young athletes are sensitive to influence from others. Thus, key social agents in sport including coaches and teammates may be important sources from whom young athletes learn emotion regulation. This study explored the relationship between athletes’ habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression and descriptive social norms from teammates and coaches (i.e., perceptions of the extent to which teammates and coaches use cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression). Based on the theory of normative social behaviour, social identity and injunctive social norms (i.e., perceptions of social approval) were examined as moderators. Regression analyses of self-report responses from 169 youth athletes in competitive sports (Mage = 15.5 ± 1.3 years) demonstrated that athletes’ use of cognitive reappraisal was associated with perceptions of teammates’ cognitive reappraisal, but not with perceptions of coaches’ cognitive reappraisal. Athletes’ use of expressive suppression was not associated with their perceptions of social norms around the use of expressive suppression. Moderation results were mostly statistically nonsignificant, with one exception: perceptions of teammates’ use of expressive suppression were positively associated with athletes’ use of expressive suppression under conditions of lower levels, but not moderate or higher levels, of injunctive norms. Overall, the findings demonstrate that athletes’ emotion regulation may be associated with their perceptions of what their teammates do, and that normative influence may depend on the source of norms (e.g., teammates vs. coaches) and the visibility of target behaviour (e.g., cognitive reappraisal vs. expressive suppression).