Group Cohesion

Question 1

What is cohesion?

Answer 1

• Desire of group members to achieve their goals.
• Forces acting to keep members within the group integrated and focussed.
• This can lead to success or can come from success.
• Can be task or social

Question 2

What is co-action?

Answer 2

• Sports success comes from people all pulling together. Everyone completes the task at the same time but separately , e.g rowing team pulling together.

Question 3

What is interaction?

Answer 3

• Sports success depends on everyone completing different roles but having to integrate them all together, e.g team sports: football, netball

Question 4

Carrons andescendants.

Answer 4

• The factors that may affect cohesion
• Environment factors: group size, age, geography, contractual obligation.
• Personal factors: group similarity, gender, aspirations/satisfaction.
• Team factors: ability, stability, desire for success, shared experiences.
• Leadership factors: leader style, leader-team relationship.

Question 5

What is task cohesion?

Answer 5

• Individuals working together to achieve an end result/common goal
• It allows members to make their own contribution.

Question 6

What is social cohesion?

Answer 6

• Individuals relating to each other to interact in the group.
• Allows support for each other and trust to develop

Question 7

What is cohesion affected by?

Answer 7

• Communication
• Past success
• Sharing common goals
• Unequal pay or rewards
• Personality
• Threats to the team
• Type of sport
• Size of the group
• Similarity of group members
• Likelihood of future success

Question 8

What is a lack of cohesion caused by?

Answer 8

• Poor tactics
• Lack of communication
• Misunderstanding of roles or the coaches instructions
• Bad timing
• Poor strategies
• Social loafing

Question 9

Steiners Model (1972)

Answer 9

• Actual productivity = Potential productivity - Losses due to faulty processes.

Question 10

Define actual productivity.

Answer 10

The performance of the team during the game, the result: a win

Question 11

Define potential productivity

Answer 11

• The groups best performance/maximum compatibility when at optimal cohesiveness
• It’s affected by skills and ability

Question 12

Define faulty processes

Answer 12

• Factors that go wrong and reduces the cohesiveness
• Poor coordination or cooperation
• Not listening to a coach, misunderstood patterns/roles, motivation and bad communication.

Question 13

What is a lack of coordination caused by?

Answer 13

• Poor strategies
• Poor tactics
• Lack of communication
• Bad timing
• Lack of understanding of roles or coaches instructions
• Too many performers, the more performers the present more coordination is needed
• Individual sports need less coordination than co-active sports and team interactive sports need most coordination

Question 14

What is the ringelman affect?

Answer 14

• When group performance decreases with group size
• Could be caused by social inhibition, anxiety, arousal and lack of motivation

Question 15

What is social loafing?

Answer 15

• Individual loss of motivation in a team player due to a lack of performance identification when individual efforts are not recognised
• Social loafers take the easy option and make limited contribution to the cause, you can spot lazy players.
• Can be caused by: Low confidence, lack of fitness, low ability, injury, negative attitude, failure to understand a role, a belief your effort wont change the result, social inhibition, poor leadership, no recognition of previous performances, lack of reinforcement, high state/trait anxiety

Question 16

How can you avoid social loafing by improving cohesion?

Answer 16

• Highlighting individual performances
• Prasing/rewarding behaviour
• Raising individuals confidence
• Setting achievable process goals
• Punish social loafing
• Increasing coordination
• Training with an audience present