APPLYING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY TO CLINICAL ANDCOUNSELING social and emotional.

The intensity of social loneliness is related to the degree of

PSYCHOLOGY discrepancy between one’s desired number of friends and one’s actual number of friends.

It has been noted that there is a gap between basic social psychological research and How much emotional loneliness one feels is determined by the discrepancy between one’s

clinical practice. However, some psychologists have attempted to bridge the gap between social desired level of intimacy and one’s actual level of intimacy. Loneliness can sometimes be a

psychology and clinical psychology. The abbreviated term given to this bridge is the social– stepping-stone to depression, which is a more serious emotional disorder.
clinical interface. The social–clinical interface involves efforts to understand, diagnose, and Well-known signs of depression include feeling tired and worn out, feeling overwhelmed by
modify a broad spectrum of other types of psychological problems, including those that involve struggling with daily life, feeling unable to cope, experiencing thoughts about worthlessness
jealousy, anger, shame, guilt, embarrassment, regret, and remorse. Moreover, a large number of and not playing a useful role in life, having a lack of interest in otherwise pleasurable
social psychological principles have been applied to these problems. activities (e.g., eating, sex), feeling sad and blue, and having so little energy that even the
The issues of mutual concern to social and clinical/counseling psychology have been easiest task seems too difficult.
categorized as falling into one of three sub domains: the origins of psychological disorders, the
Self-presentation theory
diagnosis of psychological disorders, and the treatment and prevention of psychological
disorders.  Leary and Kowalski (1995) developed a broad social psychological blueprint for
social anxiety that sheds light on its origin, maintenance, and treatment.
The origins of psychological disorders
 In other words, the theory is useful because it not only explains the psychological
This sub domain addresses the social and psychological factors that contribute to the onset chain of events that makes people vulnerable to experiencing anxiety, but also
or maintenance of emotional and behavioral problems. Social anxiety (also known as social describes how symptoms of social anxiety might be reduced (and prevented).
phobia). Well-known signs of social anxiety include feeling tense and uptight or prone to  Leary and Kowalski’s self-presentation theory (SPT) emerged from a cognitive social
embarrassment when interacting with acquaintances, blushing during conversations with frame work that was applied to understanding clinical samples of socially anxious
strangers, feeling dread about having to speak to others whom one does not know well, people.
feeling apprehensive about meeting new people, and avoiding social gatherings.  This framework assumes that individuals attempt to manage or control the
impressions that others form of them.
Anxiety associated with interpersonal interaction can be so overwhelming as to cause some
 According to SPT, other people’s impressions of us are important because their
people to act in an unnaturally awkward, inhibited, and “stiff” fashion. This apparent
impressions influence whether they behave in ways that reward us or punish us.
aloofness stimulates others to draw pejorative inferences about friendliness, self-confidence,
and poise. If socially avoidant behavior becomes habitual, it can gradually cause a person to  Moreover, how we behave toward others influences, to a certain extent, how they

become more and more detached and isolated from others. The resulting alienation, in turn, behave toward us.

is experienced as loneliness and depressive-type symptoms.  According to Leary and Kowalski (1995), a person becomes prone to experience a
fearful response in social circumstances when two conditions are present: high self-
Loneliness is defined as the sad yearning for intimacy that results from perceived
presentational motivation and low self-efficacy.
deficiencies in the number and quality of friendships. There are two types of loneliness:
 expectancies are said to mediate the association of motivation and self-efficacy to
anxiety.
 Expectancies explain how and why motivation and self-efficacy work to produce fear.
People with high self-presentational motivation who also have low social self-efficacy
are assumed to respond with fear because they have pessimistic (negative) expectancies
about their future well-being.
 Anticipatory embarrassment is the name of the emotion resulting from expecting short-
term harm to one’s social reputation. Social psychologist June Tangney and her
Self presentational motivation refers to the degree to which people are concerned with colleagues found that anticipatory embarrassment is common among people who are
how others perceive them. Obviously, some people are more concerned than others. When socially anxious (Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996). Because embarrassment is
self-presentational motivation is high, people are very concerned with ensuring that others defined contextually as an emotional reaction to a particular interpersonal situation, it is
have a particular image of them. In contrast, people who have low self-presentational more of a state variable, meaning that it is a temporary condition caused by the situation.
motivation do not care as much.  Cross-cultural differences in the prevalence of social anxiety disorders may be

Social self-efficacy is defined as a person’s level of confidence in his or her ability to systematically related to variation along the socio cultural dimension known as

convey a particular image to another person. Someone with low social self-efficacy has little individualism–collectivism, vulnerability to social anxiety may be influenced by the

confidence in his or her ability to influence the perceptions of others. A person with high degree to which a culture encourages its members to define their personal identities as

social self-efficacy will possess a sense of certainty and confidence. If a person strongly independent of others (individualism) or as interdependent and connected to others

doubts his or her ability to communicate a particular image (e.g., interesting, sexy, (collectivism).

trustworthy, talented, reliable, loyal, competent), this person’s social self-efficacy is said to A Social Psychological Model of Depression
be low. In this situation, if the doubting person’s self-presentational motivation also happens  Seligman (1975) administered painful electric shocks that could not be avoided or
to be high, SPT predicts that the combination will produce high levels of social anxiety escaped. The dogs learned that the painful situations (the shocks) were uncontrollable.
 According to SPT, a person experiences social anxiety only if two cognitive– social
 Later, these same dogs were placed in a similar “stressful situation,” but this time the
conditions are present simultaneously; namely, the person must
circumstances were slightly changed so that the dogs were given greater ability to
 (a) really want to make a particular impression and
cope.
 (b) doubt his or her ability to succeed.
 Specifically, during their second exposure to the stressful situation, the dogs could
 These two conditions, however, do not produce social anxiety directly; they produce it
escape the electric shock.
only indirectly.
 The results of these experiments showed that dogs that had previously been exposed
 According to SPT, it is this third condition that directly causes symptoms of social
to uncontrollable shocks learned to passively accept new shocks.
anxiety. This third condition is called negative outcome expectancies. Negative outcome
 Even though the dogs could have escaped the new shocks if they wished, they did not
 even try. physical attractiveness can serve as a global attribution because a person may think
 They seemed to have given up on the idea of coping by escaping. Instead of trying to that being unattractive will affect many aspects of his or her life.
do something to change their situation, they suffered passively when receiving the  One chief advantage of HTD is that it offers useful and testable predictions that
new series of painful jolts of shock enable researchers to account for both the duration of depressive episodes over time
 Seligman’s model became known as the learned helplessness model of depression. and the severity of depression. According to HTD, the duration of an episode of
The 1978 human model was called the attributional reformulation of the learned depressive symptoms is influenced by the level of perceived stability of the root cause
helplessness theory of depression. of the precipitating bad events.
 The attributional model proposed that people are depressed because of the attributions  For example, a person who is depressed and believes that his or her past academic
they make for why unfortunate things happen. failure is due to a lack of intelligence. By definition, a stable cause is unlikely to

 According to the model, people who are prone to depression make pessimistic change in the future. According to HTD, a depressed student who accounts for

attributions that cause them to believe that there is nothing they can ever say or do to academic failure in this manner will be depressed longer than will a student who

change their unfortunate circumstances. Technically, such a state of mind is called a believes that his or her academic failure is due to insufficient studying (an

negative outcome expectancy or simply helplessness unstable/changeable cause).

The hopelessness theory of depression. Self-Presentation Theory: An Approach to Treating Social Anxiety

 The hopelessness theory of depression (HTD) developed by Abramson, Metalsky, and  The model suggests, for example, that interventions should seek to modify social self

Alloy (1989) was based on the learned helplessness theory of depression. efficacy and self-presentational motivation.

 The hopelessness theory of depression suggests that depressive symptoms are most  Specifically, interventions should seek to increase the former and decrease the latter.

likely to occur when two factors are present at the sametime: (a) a vulnerable person Second, the model provides a useful theoretical blueprint for understanding how and

and (b) negative environmental circumstances. why improvement occurs (or does not occur).

 According to HTD, a vulnerable person is someone who has a characteristically  For instance, if an existing treatment for social anxiety has been used and it does not

negative style of interpreting the causes of aversive life events. reduce the client’s anxiety, one might use SPT to infer the reason why it was

 This interpretative bias is sometimes called the pessimistic explanatory style or ineffective. In addition, the model suggests that an absence of therapeutic

depressogenic attribution style. improvement might be attributable to a failure of therapy to diminish the client’s
motivation to project a desired image. Thus, SPT guides the change process by
 Stable attributions represent a broad class of diverse causes that share one thing in
suggesting targets for therapeutic intervention.
common: The person thinks that the cause will endure over time and that it will be
present in the future. A stable cause is one that is not likely to change over time (e.g.,  Reduced motivation to impress others is one of the chief benefits of Rational–emotive

physical attractiveness). therapy (RET) (Ellis, 1962) for socially anxious people.

 Global attributions also come in all shapes and sizes. The person thinks that the  RET is designed to help clients by reducing or eliminating their irrational and

cause has widespread influence on many aspects of his or her life; for example, unrealistic concerns, in this case with respect to what others will think of them.
  The application of RET to social anxiety is a good example of how SPT helps to in the treatment group showed greater improvements in hope, meaning in life, and
explain the change process in existing therapies. Other interventions, such as social self-esteem, as well as decreased levels of depression and anxiety.
skill therapies, may reduce symptoms of social anxiety by bolstering the client’s sense
Intervening Early to Prevent Depression
of social self-efficacy.
 Bandura would suggest that the most effective way in which to increase self-efficacy The Penn Resiliency Program (Gillham etal., 2007) is an excellent example of a
among socially anxious clients is to provide them with “mastery” situations in which psychotherapeutic intervention that was carefully crafted to target change in cognitive–
they can practice their interpersonal skills successfully. social processes identified by the hopelessness model as being important mediators of
depressive symptomatology. Intervention consisted of two parts: cognitive restructuring
Hopelessness Theory Approach to Treating Depression
and problem-solving skills acquisition.
 HTD was a model developed to account for why people become depressed in the
first place. Cognitive restructuring: The program sought to teach children about the nature and

 Later, when the model started to be applied to understanding remediation of impact of pessimistic versus optimistic interpretations of life events. a number of creative

depression, the therapeutic goal shifted away from hopelessness and toward techniques were employed to make cognitive restructuring procedures more accessible and

hopefulness. engaging to the young “clients.” Important cognitive–behavioral therapy concepts were

 Hopefulness is defined as expecting good things to happen in the future. This introduced and elaborated on using novel delivery modalities such as skits, stories, role-

principle of hopefulness was articulated by Needles and Abramson (1990), who plays, and cartoons.

extended the principles of HTD by suggesting that people recover from depression Skill acquisition: A vital second component of the Penn Resiliency Program is skill
by becoming more hopeful. acquisition. It is true that shifting one’s attributional style can provide hope that problems
 The hopefulness approach developed by Needles and Abramson (1990) suggests that will dissipate and that some change is possible. , the second half of the program teaches
counselors should attempt to do two things. First, they should engineer their clients’ problem-solving skills. These include emotion control techniques as well as strategies for
social environments in such a way as to increase the frequency of occurrence of relaxing, being assertive, negotiating with others, and avoiding procrastination.
positive life events. They might also consider recreational therapy or role-play
THE DIAGNOSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
enactments. Setting modest goals and achieving them on a daily basis may also
 Clinicians, whether they are psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, or others,
result in pleasurable experiences. Second, counselors should encourage clients to
are generally highly skilled professionals whose goal is to identify and alleviate
think differently and to use an enhancing attributional style. This style is the
people’s emotional and behavioral problems.
opposite of the pessimistic attributional style. Thus, clients are encouraged to make
 Research in clinical psychology has demonstrated that mental health practitioners
global and stable attributions for positive events.
are effective at treating mental illness.
 This therapy is not intended to treat pathology; instead, it is designed to help people
 However, clinicians are also humans. As a result, they sometimes make the kinds of
set goals and find ways to achieve them. Levels of hope, meaning in life, self-
errors in judgment and thinking that afflict all people from time to time (Leary &
esteem, depression, and anxiety were assessed before and after therapy. Participants
 Miller, 1986; Owen, 2008). refers to the possibility that a clinician may perceive a client’s symptoms differently after
 By clinical decision making, we mean the process of judging what is wrong with the client has been given a diagnosis compared with before the client has been diagnosed.
clients (assessment/diagnosis) and choosing among alternative approaches to For example, past medical records on new patients can result in labeling. Providing
treatment. practitioners with clients’ files is common practice when new clients have been referred.
Although this practice seems innocent enough, information in client records may
Imagine two scenarios. In the first, a person suffering from a serious anxiety disorder goes
inadvertently “contaminate” a clinician’s thinking, causing him or her to lose objectivity due
to a mental health professional for help, but the therapist fails to diagnose the problem
to labeling bias.
accurately. In the second scenario, a client is inappropriately diagnosed with an anxiety
disorder that he or she does not in fact have. With the first scenario, if a clinician The effects of group stereotypes on clinical judgments: Mental health practitioners
mistakenly diagnoses a client’s symptoms and fails to provide proper treatment, the client cannot help but notice the ethnicity or gender of their clients. For two decades, social
will continue to suffer from anxiety, and the client’s level of emotional disability might psychologists have been studying whether culturally perpetuated labels and stereotypes can
even get worse over time. The first scenario describes a case where a false-negative sometimes bias judgments made by mental health professionals (Solomon, 1992). Social–
judgment is made. This error involves not recognizing a bona fide problem that exists. clinical research has focused on several categories of stereotypes, including those based on

A false positive exists when a diagnostic label is inappropriately given to the client as in gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual identity. Clinicians work hard to be objective

the second scenario above. An example of a false-positive judgment is when a mental and try not to let individual stereotypes and biases get in the way of providing clients with

health professional incorrectly diagnoses a client with depression when in fact the client is the best care. , all people are susceptible to stereotyping other groups, and it is unfortunate

mourning the death of a loved one and is actually suffering from a normal grief reaction. that stereotypes may lead mental health professionals to misattribute or misdiagnose their
clients’ symptoms.

The effect of anchoring and confirmation bias: Anchoring effects influence people’s
judgments and decisions in every sphere of life. In the context of clinical judgment,
psychological anchors can make practitioners reluctant to deviate from their first
impressions when they receive new information that might conflict with earlier information.
In a clinical context, the anchoring effect is defined as a bias that occurs when a therapist’s
first impression about the nature of a client’s problem artificially constricts the therapist’s
subsequent assessments (Meehl, 1960; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

The very existence of the anchoring effect is due mainly to a process called confirmation
bias. Without confirmation bias, anchoring would not pose a problem because it would not
Biases in Clinical Decision Making
exist. Confirmation bias is a process in which people (e.g., clinicians) tend to seek out
The labeling effect refers to a tendency to perceive clients in ways that are erroneous owing information that confirms their initial hunches (e.g., diagnoses) and to ignore relevant
to the reactive effects of an existing psychiatric label (Corrigan, 2007). In the clinic, labeling
information that disconfirms their initial hunches.

Reducing errors and biases among professionals.

Improving the ability of practitioners to make accurate and unbiased decisions is important
because the welfare of clients could be improved if the incidence of the biases were
diminished. How can these biases and errors be reduced or eliminated? For example, in
terms of reducing racial/ethnic biases in treatment settings, clinical psychologists are paying
more attention to cultural competency in both research and treatment. Furthermore, clinical
and counseling psychology training programs that are accredited by the American
PsychologicalAssociationarerequiredtoincludeeducationonculturaldiversity.This includes
attention to the influence of a client’s age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, language, and national origin.

APPLYING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY TO SPORTS TEAMS Team Cohesion

Cohesion, which has been defined as “a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency
 Sports teams have been a boon to both basic research and applied research within
for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives
social psychology.
and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs” (Carron, Brawley, & Widmeyer,
 Sports teams at any level typically contain a rich and recognizable structure.
1997)
 They have clear, agreed-on roles that define the behavioral expectations for each
member as well as norms that define and reinforce what behaviors are acceptable The preceding definition of cohesion posed by Carron and colleagues (1997) reflects four
within the team. Individuals must balance their own motives and abilities with those key characteristics of the construct, namely, that cohesion is (a) multidimensional, (b)
of the team members around them to achieve conjoint, mutually desirable outcomes. dynamic, (c) affective, and (d) instrumental.
 These groups operate within a larger social system that includes fans, parents,  Being multidimensional simply means that cohesion is not one simple factor but
communities, and leagues. rather the sum of several interrelated factors. This sum total can include a wide
 The most significant of the topics examined in sports teams are team cohesion, variety of factors. For instance, players may stay on a team because they like their
communication patterns, team confidence, and group goal setting. teammates and/or the coach, because staying on the team gives them the best
opportunity to be successful, because they have no other teams to play for, or even
because they are being paid.
 Dynamic means that although it is relatively stable, cohesion does tend to fluctuate
over time. Team cohesion tends to wax and wane over the course of a season.
 Affectivity refers to the emotional state of the athletes. You cannot understand
 cohesion unless you recognize that part of what keeps a team united is how the Antecedents o f cohesion
players feel about one another. Likewise, another bigpart of how cohesive a team is
 Both individual antecedents (e.g., personality variables) and social antecedents
has to do with its goals and objectives.
(e.g., leadership style, role aspects) contribute to social unity and task unity, which
 Goals and objectives are the most obvious features about which a team of players
in turn lead to individual and team outcomes.
will remain united; this is the instrumental nature of cohesion. For example,
 Individual factors typically involve the personalities and demographic characteristics
members of a team who do not socialize very much may still be very united over
of teammates. Although conventional wisdom may suggest that people feel closer to
their goal to win a championship.
those who are similar to them on the most obvious characteristics, simple
 The affective and instrumental aspects of cohesion suggest two main
demographic similarity does not appear to be very important for cohesiveness in
dimensions of cohesion: social cohesion and task cohesion.
sports teams.
 There are teams that may be highly united as a social group but are not organized or
 Non demographic individual attributes, such as personality and attitudes, may have a
united with respect to accomplishing team goals. A senior adult softball team may be
greater impact on cohesion. For example, the tendency of the individual to self-
more concerned with team get-togethers and how members interact socially than
disclose (Stokes, Fuerher, & Childs, 1984) and the individual’s satisfaction with the
with how the team performs on the field (i.e., high on social cohesion and low on
team as a whole (Widmeyer& Williams, 1991) have been found to be positively
task cohesion)
related to all four factors of the GEQ
Measurement of team cohesion : Cohesiveness in sports teams has been measured using a
 Examples of social factors that influence cohesion are group size, leadership style,
variety of instruments. Most studies have relied on standardized, quantitative self-report
and member roles. The higher task cohesion in small teams likely is due to the fact
scales. The most commonly used measure is the Group Environment Questionnaire
that task coordination is easier, whereas larger groups are more likely to suffer from
(GEQ)
problems of coordination.
These two dimensions result in four factors of team cohesion: group integration— social,
 Autocratic leadership (i.e., the coach as leader makes all decisions and refrains
which refers to perceptions of the group as a whole regarding social issues (e.g., “Our team
from delegating any power)is associated with lower levels of task cohesion, as
would like to spend time together in the off-season”); group integration—task, which
measured by the GEQ.
refers to perceptions of the group as a whole regarding degree of task orientation (e.g., “Our
 Democratic leadership (i.e., the coach involves his or her athletes in making
team is united in trying to reach its performance goals”); individual attraction to group—
decisions that affect the team) is related to higher levels of task cohesion.
social, which deals with individual perceptions of the group as a social unit (e.g., “Some of
my best friends are on this team”); and individual attraction to group—task, which refers
to individual perceptions of the group’s task orientation (e.g., “I’m unhappy with my team’s
level of desire to win”)
Each factor of the GEQ is measured by the sum of its items, so that higher scores indicate a
greater level of cohesion.
  Bandura (1997) defined collective efficacy as a group’s shared belief in its ability to
organize and execute the courses of action required to obtain a certain outcome.

Team confidence and individual attributes: Because teams are composed of individuals,
team confidence can be largely affected by the psychological characteristics of the members of
the group. If all members of a team feel very confident about their abilities, it would seem to
follow that confidence in the team as a whole would be quite high. Similarly, one would expect
a team to display low team confidence if the members lacked confidence in their own abilities.

The more a coach emphasized a mastery-oriented climate (i.e., an emphasis on

Coach has an obvious role in sports teams, all team members are asked to fill certain roles. learning, improving, and working together), the higher the rowers’ efficacy beliefs in the

A role refers to a set of behaviors expected of a person in a particular social position or team.

setting. Other individual-level factors that have been researched in conjunction with collective

On a sports team, roles may be formalized (e.g., the coach and team captain) or informal efficacy include precompetitive anxiety and affect. For example, by assessing the levels of

(e.g., the “practical joker”). individual anxiety and mood of a sample of male rugby players prior to competition,

There are several different aspects to how roles may affect cohesion. Role clarity refers to Greenlees, Nunn, Graydon, and Maynard (1999) found a relationship between individuals’

the extent to which one’s role has been clearly defined. Role acceptance, that is, the degree perceptions of confidence in their team and how they felt prior to competition. For example,

to which the person expected to fill a role agrees to comply with the requirements of the team members’ concerns that the team would not perform well (i.e., low collective efficacy)

role. were associated with higher levels of anxiety and negative affect

Finally, role performance refers to how well the individual actually completes the Team confidence and cohesion: Spink (1990b) found that collegiate female volleyball
responsibilities of the role. To maximize cohesiveness, each of these aspects of one’s role teams that were high in collective efficacy were also high in both social cohesion and task
must be satisfied. cohesion. Paskevich, Brawley, Dorsch, and Widmeyer (1999) also conducted an extensive
Team Confidence study examining the relationship between collective efficacy and cohesion in a sample of
collegiate volleyball players. They found that collectiveefficacy was significantly related to
 Level of self-confidence clearly is an important factor in sports teams. Some teams are
task cohesion, with both factors of task cohesion (group integration and individual attraction
composed of a collection of talented members who are confident as individuals but lack
to the group) significantly discriminating between high- and low-efficacy groups.
confidence in their teams as a whole.
 Self-efficacy refers to the belief that one can act to successfully produce a given Team confidence and performance: According to Bandura (1986, 1997) and a wealth of
outcome under a given set of circumstances. It is essentially a situation-specific form of research in sport psychology (cf. Feltz & Chase, 1998),the most powerful factor affecting
self-confidence. Self-efficacy has long been established as one of the primary confidence is previous experience.
psychological factors in human performance. Individuals and teams are confident about doing things that they have done well in
the past, and they lack confidence about doing the things that they have not done well in the assessments of play, ability, or effort were labeled evaluation messages. All other
past. communications were termed task-irrelevant messages.

Effective Communication Teams tended to display orientation messages before performance, stimulation messages
during performance, and evaluation messages after performance. Overall, stimulation
If a team is a group of people acting together to achieve a shared goal, it goes without saying
messages were the most frequent type of communication, and the amount of task-irrelevant
that team members must communicate with one another to achieve the goal. Communication
communication was negligible.
can be defined as interpersonal acts that exchange meaning and information.
Nature of goals and goal setting: Athletes can have different types of goal orientation
Nature of team communication: Sullivan and Feltz (2003) who defined communication in
(Burton, 1989). Outcome goals focus strictly on the competitive result of an event. These
a very specific sense. They used the phrase effective communication in sports to refer to
goals are based on social comparison, that is, how one does relative to others. With outcome
those interactions that enhance the operation of the team and its members. Messages
goals, individuals focus on winning, and if they do win—regardless of how it comes
between team-mates that result in improved team performance or more satisfied players
about—their goal has been achieved. Performance goals focus on achieving success based
would be considered effective communication because they contribute to a better
on self- comparison. The objective is to improve one’s own performance; the actual
functioning team.
outcome of the competitive event might not be considered important at all. Process goals
A resource is any commodity, whether material or symbolic, that can be exchanged through are focused on the skills to be performed during competition such as trying to complete all
interpersonal behavior (Foa & Foa, 1974). Social exchange theory refers to a school of passes during a hockey game (Kingston & Hardy,1997).
theories of interpersonal interaction that have been used to explain nearly everything from
Locke and Latham’s (1985) direct mechanistic view of how goals work. According to Locke
marriage to traffic jams. These theories assume that all interactions are a form of negotiation
and Latham, setting goals can have four direct effects on performance, namely, that (a) goal
and an exchange of resources that are valued by the actors. The various social exchange
setting may increase someone’seffort toward the requisite behavior, (b) goal setting may
theories tend to offer different classifications of these resources, but they may be said to
prolong persistence once the behavior is initiated, (c) goals may direct the performer’s
include both tangible (e.g., money) and intangible (e.g., love) resources.
attention to important elements of the performance, and (d) goals may foster development of
There are several key characteristics in a social exchange interaction. First, the people are new learning strategies
assumed to be interdependent; that is, their actions and decisions rely in part on the actions
Research has revealed several important aspects of effective goal setting. Goals should be
and reactions of the other people in the situation. Second, these relationships work best if, in
specific, realistic, and challenging. The time frame should not be ignored when setting goals
the long run, they are reciprocal and mutually beneficial.
and both short-term and long-term goals should be used. Evaluation and feedback based on
Communication resources in sport: Hanin (1992) identified four main styles of these goals should be carried out in a consistent and timely fashion in both competitive and
communication. Messages that dealt with planning strategy or technique were labeled training situations
orientation messages, whereas those between teammates that served to motivate or
energize team members were labeled stimulation messages. Discussions that focused on
Group goal setting Sullivan (1993) developed an extensive communication training program for sports teams
designed to optimize the interpersonal communication skills of the athletes. As a team
Eys, Patterson, Loughead, and Carron (2006) developed a three-stage protocol for
communicates more openly, the sense of cohesiveness in the team is enhanced. And as we
implementing a team goal-setting program. Their protocol outlines four principles of
have seen, team cohesion is positively related to performance. Sullivan’s (1993)
team goal setting: (a) selecting the team goals, (b) establishing the target for the team goals,
communication training program was applied to seven teams, including their coaches. In
(c) coaches reminding players of the team’s goals, and (d) evaluating, providing feedback,
total, more than 80 male and female team sport athletes participated. The intervention lasted
and reevaluating the team goals for effectiveness.
for the entire season and consisted of seven stages. Each stage entailed a specific objective
In the first stage of the protocol, the rationale for the goal-setting program and the setting of with corresponding activities that were designed to enhance different interpersonal
team goals are discussed and carried out with the team. The coaches then remind their communication skills of the teammates.
players of the team’s goals in the second stage. This can be done verbally, or by posting the
team goals in a visible location in the locker room. The third stage is when the goal
evaluation and feedback occurs.

Team building refers to the active planned process of optimizing the abilities of teammates
toward maximizing individual performance, team performance, or social outcomes. To a
considerable extent, team-building interventions typically are directed toward improving a
team’s internal social dynamics (i.e., chemistry).

A unique approach to team building is the use of family therapy for sports teams.