Social influence and weekly goal pursuit: An intensive longitudinal study involving rowers’ grit perceptions

Rachel Edwards, M. Blair Evans

While training, athletes pursue their individual goals alongside teammates, pursuing numerous shared and independent goals. Sport researchers have rarely examined interpersonal social influences at play in pursuing competitive goals in sport teams. In the present study, we leveraged Transactive Goal Dynamics theory as a framework for understanding how team context variables and individual perceptions of teammates interact to influence variability in weekly, sport-relevant grit (i.e., goal perseverance and goal interest). Eight weekly surveys were conducted with 22 competitive rowers (male= 23% female= 77%; 7.18 responses on average) across Canada with the aim of exploring research questions pertaining to: (1) how weekly deviations from one’s own average grit relate to deviations in perceptions of teammates’, (2) how theoretically relevant factors predicted variance in grit, and (3) how individual and teammate grit relate to sport relevant outcomes (e.g., performance, positive affect). Multilevel analyses nesting responses within participants demonstrated significant within-person variance in rowers’ own goal interest and perseverance as well as their perceptions of their teammates’ goal pursuit. Variability at a weekly level was significantly predicted by training environment factors including individual perceptions of relative training intensity and teammates sharing collective goals. Further, individual grit was positively associated with weekly changes in positive affect. These findings have significant implications for understanding team dynamics (e.g., how individual athletes exhibiting high or low grit during a given week impact their teammate’s goal pursuit) and the potential to predict athletes’ goal interest and commitment from their perceptions of their team environment.