Participation in team sport: A self-expansion perspective

The self-expansion perspective proposed by Aron and Aron (1986) suggest tha t people are motivated to include external features of the environment such as a close other and a group of people into their self: Previous studies s howed that this type of integration leads to positive consequences for the individual. As such, the present investigation was designed to apply this p erspective to athletes. We thus tested for the presence of three elements o f inclusion in the self that is, the inclusion of a close other (e.g., coac h), a group (e.g., team), and an activity (e.g., basketball). We also teste d the relationship between the three elements of inclusion and measures rel evant to the sport domain (e.g, relationship with the coach, team cohesion, intentions to play). Male and female basketball players (N = 121) complete d a questionnaire following a training session. Stepwise regression analyse s were conducted wherein the three elements of inclusion served as independ ent variables and the sport-related constructs as dependent variables. As p redicted results revealed that each type of self-inclusions was uniquely re lated to specific sport variables. The present findings provide important s upport for the self-expansion model in the spout context.