The sports performance of an athlete is the result of a set of physical, technical, tactical, and psychological variables that affect their performance in many competitive situations (Eys & Brawley, 2018; Weinberg & Gould, 2017). Among the psychological factors that improve or debilitate a performance, mood states stand out for promoting changes in behavior patterns (Berger & Owen, 1988; Searight & Montone, 2017; Carvalho et al. 2022), focus of vision, energy expenditure (Weinberg & Gould, 2017), aerobic resistance (Murgia et al. 2016), and modulation of athletes' organic responses (Arruda et al. 2013).

In this sense, positive mood states can help to overcome adverse or unpleasant situations during sports practice, which can cause internal imbalances that culminate in inadequate physiological and behavioral responses (Searight & Montone, 2017). Therefore, the athletes need to show an adequate mood profile to achieve higher sports performance (Brandt et al. 2014; Andrade et al. 2016; Weinberg & Gould, 2017), and said ideal profile, as named by Morgan (1980), would be the iceberg profile. When showing the iceberg profile, the athlete experiences low negative mood indexes (tension, depression, hostility, fatigue and confusion) and high positive mood index vigor (Rohlfs et al. 2008; Searight & Montone, 2017).

However, the mood profile of an athlete can change very fast due to their ephemeral nature (Lane & Terry, 2000), being of paramount importance to identify associated variables that can be manipulated, in order to provide better sports performance and competitive condition to the athlete (Lowther & Lane, 2002).

In this sense, group cohesion, considered as one of the most relevant sports variable for improving team performance and success (Benson et al. 2016; Saénz-López et al. 2021) has been highlighted. Understood as the tendency of a group to unite and remain united in the pursuit of goals and the satisfaction of affective needs (Carron et al. 1985; Weinberg & Gould, 2017), group cohesion is manifested in the social and task dimensions.

Social cohesion refers to interpersonal relationships that seek to meet the needs of social belonging, reflecting how much team members like each other (Carron et al. 2002; Eys et al. 2009). On the other side, task cohesion reflects the degree in which team members stay united to reach collective goals related to performance, referring on how much team members work together (Filho et al. 2014; Nascimento-Junior et al. 2016).

Both social cohesion and task cohesion notions are determined from the athletes’ individual perceptions on team environment (Eys et al. 2009). This way, the athlete’s perceptions and feelings on the sports environment stand out as important factors that can affect in changes in their mood states (Vieira et al. 2008). According to Oh and Gill (2017), environment perception developed by group members can affect members’ cognition, individual feelings, and behaviors. Scientific literature also associates group cohesion to better interpretation of pre-competition anxiety (Wolf et al. 2014), depressive symptoms on youth athletes (Nixdorf et al. 2016), satisfaction of basic needs (Erikstad et al. 2018), stress (Benrabah et al. 2020), and athletes’ personalities (Kim et al. 2020).

Thus, greater group cohesion of the teams seems to affect positively many psychological variables of sportspeople. From this presupposition, this study raises a research problem on the possibility of an associative relation between group cohesion and the athletes’ mood sates, when hypothesizing that higher cohesion levels are associated with better mood profiles, such as the iceberg profile.

The relation between group cohesion and mood states of adult athletes was investigated in the studies of Terry et al. (2000) and Lowther and Lane (2002), which showed strong indication of an association between the variables, offering support to the hypothesis of this study. However, when considering that emotional instability manifests more intensely in young athletes (Frank et al. 2015; Nixdorf et al. 2016; Sabato et al. 2016), the investigation of the relation between cohesion and mood in the context of youth sports is justifiable.

By considering that group cohesion consequences need to be widely investigated (Eys & Brawley, 2018) and new investigations on the group cohesion of young athletes are necessary (Benson et al. 2016; Eys et al. 2018; Filho et al. 2014), this study tries to analyze possible associations between group cohesion and pre-competition mood states in youth athletes.

The athletes investigated in the present study are from youth academy, participate in state and national competitions and had 3.9±1.7 years of sports experience (in competitions). Data referring to mood states profile indicate that 49.4% of the sample (n=40) showed the iceberg profile. Table 1 shows descriptive data on age, sex and quantitative number of athletes with iceberg profile.

Table 2 shows that social cohesion has a significant negative correlation with the depression and fatigue dimensions at 0.05 level (r= -.214 and r= -.260, respectively) and with the anger and confusion dimensions at 0.01 level (r= -.313 and r= -.348, respectively). Social cohesion is positively correlated with the vigor dimension (r=.371; p<0. 01), and no correlation with the tension dimension was observed. Task cohesion has a significant negative correlation with the tension dimension at 0.05 level (r= -.243) and with the depression, anger, fatigue and confusion dimensions at 0.01 level (r= -.309, r= -.359, r= -.334, and r= -.462 respectively). The task cohesion also has a positive correlation with vigor state (r=.381; p<0.01). The strongest correlation identified was negative, between task cohesion and confusion state (r= -.462; p<0.01).

Table 3 shows the results of the binary logistic regression, including the dimensions of social cohesion and task cohesion as predictor variables, and outcome variable dichotomized into groups with iceberg profile (WIP) and without iceberg profile (WOIP). Both social dimension (r2=0.218; OR=2.056; IC=1.35-3.12) and task dimension (r2=0.259; OR=2.481; IC=1.47-4.16) are shown as significant predictors of the athletes’ pre-competition mood states profile. Higher indexes of task and social cohesion are associated to the iceberg profile. Among the cohesion dimensions, task dimension appears as a stronger predictor of mood states.

Table 1.

Table 2

Table 3

This study sought to investigate the relation between group cohesion of sport teams and the pre-competition mood profile of youth athletes. The main findings indicate that: (a) practically half of the investigated athletes presented the iceberg profile, however, a representative part of the sample (50.6%) did not have a positive model of mood in the pre-competitive period; (b) social cohesion has a positive correlation with vigor state and negative correlation with depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion states; (c) task cohesion has a positive correlation with vigor state and a negative correlation with tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion states and; (d) although the two group cohesion dimensions are significantly correlated with mood states, the binary logistic regression determined task cohesion as a more relevant predictor of the iceberg mood profile.

The fact that less than a half of the athletes assessed (49.4%) presented the iceberg mood profile suggests possible emotional alterations to most parts of the athletes in the period preceding the competition. Results that diverge from previous studies (Arruda et al. 2013; Brandt et al. 2014; Escobar & Lacerda, 2010; Neves et al. 2016), which indicated the prevalence of iceberg profile athletes during pre-competition period. It is worth to emphasize that these studies were conducted in semi-elite or elite adult athletes, unlike this research, which was carried out on youth athletes.

According to Vieira et al. (2008), changes in the athletes’ mood in the sport context, among other factors, can depend on previous experiences. In this sense, a possible speculation that can justify the disagreement of the results of this study with other results already presented in the literature is the influence of sports experience on the regulation of pre-competitive mood, as adult athletes have a longer sport trajectory, greater emotional intelligence (Suárez & Jiménez, 2021) and a more effective control of feelings of anxiety and distress (Zarceño et al. 2017), which can contribute in mood adjustment.

Although there is consensus on the importance of appropriate mood for the moment of competition (Brandt et al. 2014; Parsons-Smith et al. 2017; Weinberg & Gould, 2017), the lower rate of iceberg profile among young athletes (even more expressive in young women athletes), if compared to adult athletes who have better mood states (Arruda et al. 2013; Brandt et al. 2014; Escobar & Lacerda, 2010; Neves et al. 2016), suggest the need for a more careful look into mood states of youth athletes.

Both group cohesion dimensions (social and task) have a positive correlation with vigor and a negative correlation with negative mood states (except for social cohesion and tension states), indicating association between higher group cohesion levels with better pre-competition mood states. Fitzgerald et al. (2012) suggest that social relation influence the athletes’ behavioral and psychosocial results. In addition, according to Vieira et al. (2008), mood states of an athlete can alter from their situation awareness. In this sense, when perceiving a more cohesive, pleasant and welcoming social environment, due to the greater cohesion of their group, the athlete tends to have a more positive mood profile.

The results of this study suggest that the greater the cohesion perception among team members, the greater the chance of the athlete showing the iceberg profile. Kavussanu & Al-Yaaribi (2019) also identified a strong relation between pro-social behavior within the team and better emotional results on athletes, reinforcing this theory. In this sense, we can consider the development of good group cohesion levels as fundamental, which can affect positively mood and, consequently, the team's sport performance.

Task cohesion correlates strongly with mood states dimensions. In addition, logistic regression indicated higher odds ratio for task cohesion as mood states predictor. In this sense, athletes with high task cohesion levels have a greater chance of presenting mood states appropriate for better sport performance. Although social and task cohesion standards are susceptible to changes throughout the useful life of the group (Jamieson, 2010), for Dunlop et al. (2013), social cohesion can take some time to develop. As group members get to know each other, task cohesion manifests quickly, and can justify higher task dimensions levels in the assessed teams.

In general, task related aspects are more relevant for people involved in sport teams than social aspects (Leo-Marcos et al. 2013; Nascimento-Junior et al. 2018). In a complementary way, López et al. (2012) emphasize that in performance-oriented sport teams, there is a tendency to model behaviors aimed at task aspects, which can justify greater relevance of task cohesion for pre-competition mood states in youth athletes.

Recent reviews have indicated greater relation of task dimension with better sport teams performance (Benson et al. 2016; Filho et al. 2014), emphasizing the prominent role of task cohesion for teamwork productivity (Callow et al. 2009). Considering that highly task oriented individuals tend to feel well succeeded when they strive and see improvements as a result of their hard work (Kavussanu & Al-Yaaribi, 2019), it seems plausible a greater correlation of task dimension with better pre-competition mood states.

This study has some limitations. In relation to data collection instruments, although both have been validated for Portuguese context, specific versions for the age group of the surveyed population could have been used. No data were collected on the athletes' recent injury history. In addition, a larger sample could enable other analysis perspectives.

Finally, it is important to highlight that the intention of this study was not to exhaust the discussions about associative relation between the variables, but the opposite. We tried to explore in a preliminary manner the relation between group cohesion and mood states of youth athletes. In this sense, even considering these limitations, the original character of the study can represent an initial step for new investigations on the relation of constructs group cohesion and mood states and on how these variables relate to the sports performance of athletes in these age groups.

This study tried to investigate the possible relation of group cohesion and pre-competition mood states of youth athletes of collective sport modalities. The expectation a priori was that higher group cohesion levels would be associated to the occurrence of the iceberg mood profile. The main results indicated that both task cohesion and social cohesion have a significant positive correlation with vigor state and a negative correlation with negative mood dimensions. In addition, task cohesion was revealed to be the strongest predictor of mood states, confirming the hypothesis of this study.

Data still suggest that youth athletes have a less adjusted mood profile than older and professional athletes, justifying a more accentuated care with this age group of athletes. In this sense, new studies on different aspects of mood in this population are necessary.