Hypothesis 6: Emotional intelligence will be negatively related to all three forms of dehumanisation.
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Resilience
This section will define resilience, note the differences between resilience and coping, highlight current research on resilience within the sporting domain and progress to explain how resilience can predict the extent to which a coach may engage with forms of dehumanisation. According to Fletcher and Sarkar (2013), the study of psychological resilience seeks to understand why some individuals are able to withstand, or even thrive on, the pressure they experience in their lives. Psychological resilience, from here on just termed ‘resilience’, is defined as the role of mental processes and behaviour in promoting personal assets and protecting an individual from the potential negative effect of stressors (Fletcher and Sarkar, 2013).
Understanding resilience
Resilience has previously been conceptualised as both a personality trait and a process. Work conceptualising it as a personality trait has suggested resilience represents a constellation of characteristics that enable individuals to adapt to the circumstances they encounter (Connor & Davidson, 2003). Such characteristics have been said to include; resourcefulness, strength of character, flexibility of functioning in response to varying environmental demands (Block & Block, 1980), hope (Horton & Wallander, 2001), social support (Brown, 2008) and self-efficacy (Gu & Day, 2007). These characteristics have been referred to as ‘protective factors’ which Rutter (1985) defined as “influences that modify, ameliorate, or alter a person’s response to some environmental hazard that predisposes to a maladaptive outcome” (p. 600). Work considering resilience as a process suggests that the effects of these protective factors will vary contextually (from situation to situation) and temporally (throughout a situation and across an individual’s lifespan; Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013). For example, if a person reacts positively to a stressor at one point in their life, this does not guarantee a positive reaction in the future. For the purposes of this study, resilience will be considered as the application of these personality traits.
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This is based on the premise that an individual may have such traits, but simply possessing these traits does not necessarily mean one is resilient. Yet to effectively apply these traits would be to demonstrate resilience.
In the interests of clarity, it is important to note the conceptual differences between resilience and coping. Fletcher and Sarkar (2013) summarise this by stating that resilience is a positive response to a potential stressful situation, whereas the nature of reactionary coping strategies may be positive (e.g. encouraging) or negative (e.g. substance abuse). Essentially, this suggests that resilience is being equipped to effectively deal with stress before it arrives, whereas coping is dealing with the stress, either effectively or ineffectively, once it has arrived.
Research on resilience applied to this study
Within sport, resilience has been explored across a range of different contexts. Work on athletes has explored the importance of resilience for sporting success and what may characterise resilience individually or in a team setting. For example, Holt and Dunn (2004) examined the psychosocial competencies among elite male adolescent soccer players and resilience emerged as one of the four major themes regarded as central to an individual’s success. Moreover, Gucciardi et al. (2011) examined individual resilient qualities in a sport context and found examples of such qualities to include; adaptability, staying focused under pressure and an ability to handle unpleasant feelings. Morgan and colleagues’ (2013) work sought to define team resilience, concluding that it is a “dynamic, psychosocial process which protects a group of individuals from the potential negative effect of stressors they collectively encounter” (p. 552). Morgan et al. (2013) went on to note that resilient characteristics of elite sport teams include; group structure, mastery approaches, social capital and collective efficacy.
Research on resilience within the sport setting has also included work on coaches. Specifically, Wagstaff et al. (2018) explored how resilience moderated the relationship
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between the frequency of stressors and burnout in both athletes and coaches. The findings of this work provided evidence of a positive relationship between the frequency of organisational stressors and burnout, as well as the moderating effect of resilience in coaches, whereby as psychological resilience increased, there was a significantly weaker relationship between organisational stressors and burnout. These findings are supported by research beyond sport in other employment settings. Work exploring resilience within social workers found a significant negative relationship between resilience and psychological distress (Kinman & Grant, 2010), suggesting that workers with higher resilience experienced lower amounts of psychological distress. Moreover, a study by Arnetz et al. (2009) explored the effect of resilience training on stress and performance in policing. Resilience training resulted in significantly less negative mood, less heart rate reactivity and better police performance compared to control. Both of these studies therefore support Howard’s (2008) contention that resilience might buffer the negative impacts of work stress.
When directly applied to the present study, the implication of this body of work is that coaches higher in resilience are less likely to suffer negative effects of a stressor, like that of a team selection decision. As such, this study hypothesises that coaches high in resilience are less likely to increase in their levels of dehumanisation of the athletes following a team selection decision, if they are to see any change. Similarly, it is also hypothesised that coaches high in resilience are less likely to engage in, or witness a very small increase in, self-dehumanisation following a selection decision. Contrarily, coaches low in resilience would be more likely to increase all three forms of dehumanisation. Individuals high in resilience should be sufficiently equipped to deal with the stressors such that they do not need to functionally employ dehumanisation in order to cope with the stress of a team selection decision.
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Hypothesis 5: Coaches’ resilience will negatively predict both overall use, and increases