R7 Believing in "Us": Exploring Leaders' Capacity to Enhance Team Confidence and Performance by Building a Sense of Shared Identity

Imperative of Team Confidence

Across sports, politics, and business, leaders recognize that collective success requires moving beyond individual talent

Research Question

Do certain leadership behaviours actively strengthen members' psychological attachment to, and belief in, the team?

[Mood] Contagion

The tendency to mimic and synchronize expressions, postures, and vocalizations, leading to emotional convergence

Current Research

• Prior studies explored [mood] contagion

• Other work examined how a leader’s self-confidence impacts individual follower performance

Research Gap

Very little empirical research had previously examined

• the direct impact of a leader expressing confidence in the team as a whole

• how expressed confidence shapes shared expectations of future success and objective performance outcomes

Literature on Leader’s Confidence and Effects on Team

1. Enhancing percieved effectiveness

2. Strengthening a sense of “us”

3. Yes, we can!

4. Enhancing team member’s performance

Psychological Capital

A leader's positive appraisal and belief in the situation and available psychological resources, expressed through hope, resilience, efficacy, and optimism (HERO)

• Demonstrating positive emotions and psychological resources increases followers' trust in the leader and enhances perceptions of the leader's overall effectiveness

PsyCap Research Gap

• Previous PsyCap research focused mainly on how leader positivity influences follower's’ ratings of the leader

• The direct downstream impact of a leader's expressed team confidence on team members' own confidence and actual performance capacity remained unaddressed.

Social Identity Approach

Distinguishes between personal identity (self as a unique individual, 'I'/'me') and social identity (self as a group member sharing goals and values, 'we'/'us').

Two Theoretical Perspectives Comprising the Social Identity Approach

Social Identity Theory

Self-Categorization Theory

Social Identity Theory

In this theory, leaders exert influence over team members by creating, embodying, advancing, and embedding a shared collective sense of 'us' among group members.

• Confidence transfers through social psychological processes that strengthen members' team identification, rather than through an automatic or mystical contagion process.

Collective Efficacy (Process-Oriented)

A group's shared belief in its conjoint capability to organize and execute the specific courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment

• Focus: Internal operational processes and team coordination

• Effect: Higher collective efficacy directly drives behavioural persistence—leading teams to set more challenging performance goals, exert greater physical effort, and endure adversity during competition

Team Outcome Confidence (Outcome-Oriented)

Shared confidence in achieving competitive results, outperforming rivals, or securing victory

• Focus: Final competitive scores and standings rather than the internal mechanics of play.

Leadership to Process to Outcome

• Identity-Driven Process Beliefs: When an athlete leader demonstrates high quality across task, motivational, and social roles, team members internalize a stronger shared identity ("we").

• Process Precedes Outcome: This enhanced social identification directly strengthens collective efficacy—giving members confidence in their tactical and interpersonal execution.

• Cascading to Performance: Robust process confidence ultimately drives team outcome confidence (belief in final victory), transforming shared psychological alignment into superior objective performance on the court or field.

The Pathway from Confidence to Performance

• Goal Internalization & Effort: When team members grow more confident in their collective potential, they internalize team goals more deeply and exert greater effort on behalf of the group (Haslam, Powell, & Turner, 2000).

• Empirical Support: Previous studies confirm a direct link: higher collective confidence and stronger social identification consistently predict superior objective performance outcomes (Fransen, Decroos et al., 2014; Solansky, 2011; Stajkovic et al., 2009).

• The Leader's Catalytic Role: By actively expressing team confidence, a leader initiates a psychological chain reaction—boosting team identification and collective confidence, which ultimately drives enhanced performance.

Pygmalion Effect

A self-fulfilling prophecy where higher expectations lead to superior performance.

Golem Effect

The inverse phenomenon where low expectations lead to performance decrements.

Pygmalion and Golem Effect Research Gap

While meta-analyses confirm these effects in educational and corporate environments (Kierein & Gold, 2000), research in competitive sports yields mixed results (Rejeski et al., 1979; Solowon et al., 1998).

Hypotheses

1. Team Confidence Contagion

2. Leader Asymmetry

3. Mediating Mechanisms

4. Performance Impact

Team Confidence Contagion

1a. Members feel significantly more confident in their team's success when the leader expresses high confidence compared to when the leader expresses low confidence.

1b. When a leader expresses high confidence, team members perceive their other teammates to be more confident in the team's success as well.

Leader Asymmetry

The team leader has a stronger influence on teammates' confidence than other team members do, in both positive and negative directions.

Mediating Mechanisms

3a The confidence contagion effect will be partially mediated by team identification—meaning high leader confidence strengthens shared group identity, which in turn enhances members' team confidence.

3b The contagion effect will also be mediated by collective efficacy—meaning high leader confidence enhances process-oriented confidence in internal team dynamics, which drives overall team confidence.

Performance Impact

An athlete leader's expressed confidence will directly influence objective team performance over time.

• Performance will increase when the leader expresses high confidence, but will decrease when the leader expresses low confidence.

Methodology

Methodology & Experimental Design

This section outlines the rigorous methodological framework used to test leader confidence contagion, detailing participant demographics, confederate manipulation, and measurement tools.

Participants and Group Formation

• Sample: 104 Flemish basketball players (average age 14.6 years, SD = 1.3; average experience 6.3 years, SD = 2.7).

• Exclusions: Two players were excluded due to intellectual disabilities that prevented adequate understanding of the questionnaires.

• Competitive Level: 26 players competed at a national level; the remaining 76 played at a provincial level.

• Group Structure: Participants were divided into 26 groups of four. To eliminate prior familiarity, each group was deliberately assembled using players from different club teams across the 12-to-17 age range.

Experimental Procedure and Manipulation

• Recruitment: Recruited via 47 Flemish basketball club presidents, with signed informed consent and an incentive (signed elite jerseys) for the winning team of the free-throw contest.

• The Confederate Leader: Each 4-person team was complemented by a confederate introduced as the "team captain." To establish leader credibility (following Glenn & Horn, 1993; Price & Weiss, 2011), the confederates were older (average 6 years senior), highly skilled, and knowledgeable about basketball trivia.

• The Cover Story: Participants believed they were competing in a national free-throw shooting contest against other teams (cumulative team score).

• Standardized Scoring Control: Each player took 10 free throws (two at a time in rotation). To control for leader performance, confederates deliberately scored exactly 5 out of 10 shots in both conditions (missing shots intentionally when necessary due to their superior skill).

• Confidence Manipulation Conditions:

  • High-Confidence Condition (n=13 teams): Confederates followed a detailed script encouraging teammates, expressing certainty in winning, displaying enthusiastic reactions, and using standardized phrases ("Great play team! If we keep playing like this, we will easily outscore the other team!").

  • Low-Confidence Condition (n=13 teams): Confederates displayed frustration, made demoralizing comments, showed discouraged body language, and used standardized phrases ("This situation is really getting desperate. If we keep playing like this, we will never win this contest").

Measures

• Manipulation Checks:

  • Perceived Leader Status: Rated on a scale from -3 (not at all) to 3 (completely) to verify that participants viewed the confederate as the team leader.

  • Perceived Leader's Team Confidence: Assessed whether players detected the high vs. low confidence manipulation.

  • Relative Impact: Measured the perceived influence of the leader's behavior relative to other teammates on a scale from -3 (strongly confident of losing) to 3 (strongly confident of winning).

• Process-Oriented Collective Efficacy: Measured using the 5-item Observational Collective Efficacy Scale for Sports (OCESS; Fransen, Kleinert, et al., 2014) on a 7-point scale (=.93).

• Team Outcome Confidence: Measured via a single item assessing shared belief in winning the competition (Fransen, Kleinert, et al., 2014).

• Team Identification: Measured using a validated 3-item scale assessing connection and importance of group membership (Boen et al., 2007; =.95).

• Performance: Objective scoring recorded as the total number of free throws scored by every player (0 to 10 scale) during warm-up and test sessions.

Data Analysis Approach

• Nonparametric Testing: Because Shapiro-Wilk tests confirmed the data were not normally distributed, nonparametric alternatives were utilized:

  • Wilcoxon signed-ranks test (alternative to dependent t-test)

  • Mann–Whitney U-test (alternative to independent t-test)

  • Aligned Friedman Rank Test (alternative to Repeated Measures ANOVA)

• Justification for Non-Multilevel Analysis: While nesting players within teams normally calls for multilevel modeling, Hox (2002) and Kreft (1996) guidelines dictate that multilevel analyses require larger group counts (e.g., 30 groups with 30 members). Given the small group size (n=4 per team), standard non-parametric analyses were deemed appropriate.

Manipulation Check

Perceived Leader’s Team Confidence

• Baseline Standardization (Warm-Up): A Mann–Whitney U-test revealed no significant baseline difference in the leader's perceived team confidence during the warm-up session across conditions (p=.09), demonstrating consistent baseline behavior before the experimental manipulation.

• High-Confidence Condition:

  • During the test, the team leader was perceived as expressing significantly higher team confidence than regular teammates (p<.001).

  • Comparing warm-up to test performance, the leader's expressed team confidence showed a statistically significant increase (p<.001).

• Low-Confidence Condition:

  • During the test, the team leader was perceived as expressing significantly lower team confidence than regular teammates (p<.001).

  • Comparing warm-up to test performance, the leader's expressed team confidence showed a statistically significant decrease (p<.001).

• Manipulation Check Conclusion: The experimental protocols successfully established the confederate's leadership authority and created two distinct, standardized confidence environments (High vs. Low) for analysis.

Team Leader’s Perceived Influence on Team Member’s Confidence

• H1a Fully Supported: Leader confidence directly dictates personal team outcome confidence, scaling upward during high-confidence displays and plummeting during low-confidence displays.

• H1b Supported: While high leader confidence boosts perceived peer confidence (though statistically marginal in pre-to-post gains), low leader confidence exerts a powerful, highly significant demoralizing effect across the entire team unit.

Relative Impact of the Leader on Team Confidence Contagion

• Hypothesis 2 Supported: The designated team leader exerts a disproportionately powerful influence over the team's collective psychological state compared to ordinary members.

• Directional Versatility: This heightened leadership leverage operates in both directions—amplifying positive confidence contagion upward and driving demoralizing negative confidence contagion downward.

Mediating Role of Team Identification and Collective Efficacy

Hypothesis 3a: Team Identification as a Mediator

• Preconditions Met:

  • Significant direct path from leader's perceived team confidence to players' collective efficacy (=.72,p<.001).

  • Significant paths linking team identification as a mediator to both the leader's confidence and players' collective efficacy (p<.001).

• Chi-Square Difference Test: Constraining the direct path between leader confidence and collective efficacy to zero resulted in a significant degradation of model fit (2(1)=25.36,p<.001), supporting the unconstrained model.

• Conclusion (H3a Supported): Team identification partially mediates the relationship between the leader's expressed confidence and the team's collective efficacy. When a leader expresses high confidence, it deepens shared group identity ("us"), which drives process-oriented confidence.

Hypothesis 3b: Collective Efficacy as a Mediator

• Preconditions Met: All direct paths among leader confidence, collective efficacy, and team outcome confidence were statistically significant (p<.001).

• Chi-Square Difference Test: Comparing unconstrained and constrained models yielded a significant difference (2(1)=14.87,p<.001), confirming the necessity of the direct path.

• Conclusion (H3b Supported): Collective efficacy partially mediates the relationship between the leader's expressed confidence and team outcome confidence (winning expectations). Furthermore, additional analyses revealed that collective efficacy fully mediates the link between team identification and final outcome confidence.

The Impact of Perceived Leader’s Confidence on Players’ Performance

Temporal Progression: First Half vs. Second Half (Hypothesis 4 Supported)

Because the leader acted neutrally during the warm-up, the psychological impact of the manipulated confidence expressions unfolded progressively over time.

• Repeated-Measures Interaction: An Aligned Friedman Rank Test (comparing the first five vs. last five free throws) revealed a significant interaction effect (F(1,100)=7.77,p=.006).

• High-Confidence Condition: One-tailed Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests confirmed that when the leader expressed high team confidence, members' performance increased significantly over the course of the test session (p.05).

• Low-Confidence Condition: Conversely, when the leader expressed low team confidence, members' performance decreased significantly over time (p.05).

• Conclusion (H4 Supported): Objective team performance varies directly as a function of the leader's expressed confidence, proving that athlete leaders possess the capacity to drive tangible performance gains—or induce performance declines—through strategic psychological communication.

Discussion

• Confirmation of Hypotheses: The study successfully validated all four main hypotheses, demonstrating that an athlete leader's expressed confidence dynamically alters teammates' psychological states and objective performance.

• The Contagion Dynamic (H1 & H2): Leader confidence transfers directly to followers, with the designated leader exerting a disproportionately powerful influence over team confidence compared to regular peers in both positive and negative directions.

• The Mediational Chain (H3): Confidence transfer is not a passive or "mystical" emotional mimicry. Instead, it operates through a structured social identity pathway:

  1. Leader expresses team confidence.

  2. Enhanced team identification strengthens the psychological reality of "us" (H3a).

  3. Stronger group identity increases process-oriented collective efficacy (H3b).

  4. Collective efficacy ultimately drives outcome-oriented team confidence (winning expectations).

• Performance Trajectory (H4): Persistent high leader confidence generates progressive performance gains, whereas persistent low leader confidence induces measurable performance declines over time.

Considerations

• Absence of a Neutral Control Group: The experimental design compared high-confidence versus low-confidence conditions without a strictly neutral leader control group.

• Addressing Learning Effects: Without a control group, one might question whether the performance improvements observed in the high-confidence condition were simply the result of practice or a natural learning curve over the course of 10 free throws.

• The Asymmetric Threat of Low Confidence: However, the presence of a learning effect actually strengthens the conclusion regarding the negative condition. If participants naturally improved due to practice, the fact that performance decreased significantly under a low-confidence leader means the demoralizing impact of negative leadership is even more potent than raw scores suggest.

Practical Implications 1

• Prior research overwhelmingly focused on how a leader's self-confidence alters how followers evaluate that leader (e.g., ratings of leader effectiveness; Hoffman et al., 2011).

• This study demonstrates that when leaders explicitly project confidence in the collective capability of the team, they directly empower followers' belief that they can make a difference together as an operational unit.

1. Double-Edged Sword of Leadership Leverage

2. Advancing Emotional and Psychological Contagion

Double-Edged Sword of Leadership Leverage

Leadership leverage is inherently symmetrical: while expressing high collective belief inspires team success, expressing doubt or frustration acts as a powerful catalyst for team-wide demotivation and performance decline.

Advancing Emotional and Psychological Contagion

• This study extends work on leader mood contagion (Avey et al., 2011; Bono & Ilies, 2006) by showing that structural confidence—not just general positive mood—transfers directly across group members.

• Aligns with qualitative insights in sports psychology (e.g., Tamminen & Crocker, 2013 on emotion regulation in elite curling) showing that successful leaders actively manage and mask negative emotions because they understand the contagious nature of their public displays.

• Mirrors organizational findings (Wagstaff et al., 2012b) where leadership acts as a catalyst for spreading shared pride, passion, and efficacy across an entire organizational structure.

Practical Implications 2

• While peer team members influence the collective emotional climate (Kelly & Barsade, 2001; Totterdell, 2000), leaders retain a unique, disproportionate capacity to dictate the group's psychological trajectory.

• Strategic emotional regulation—deliberately expressing or suppressing specific emotions to shape team climate—is a vital interpersonal skill for both athletic and organizational leaders (Wagstaff et al., 2012a, 2012b).

1. Three Core Contributions to Literature

Three Core Contributions to the Literature

1. Quantitative Mapping of Negative Confidence Spirals:

   • Moves beyond qualitative observations by providing empirical, quantitative proof of a negative confidence spiral.

   • When a leader displays low confidence or demoralized behavior, it actively depresses teammates' efficacy and leads to measurable performance declines.

2. Unpacking the Social Identity Mechanism:

   • Explains why confidence transfers: confident leaders encourage members to internalize a shared social identity ("us"), which strengthens process-oriented belief in the unit's operational capability.

   • Conversely, when a leader "gives up," team members distance themselves from both the leader and each other, weakening group cohesion and task performance.

3. Moving Beyond Simple "Emotional Mimicry":

   • Reframes "contagion" from an automatic, one-to-one emotional reaction into a structural, team-wide psychological transformation.

   • A leader's expressed belief fundamentally reshapes how members relate to the group as a whole, determining collective efficacy, shared identity, and overall objective performance.

Temporal Dynamics of Leadership Influence

This subsection highlights the time-dependent nature of leadership influence, emphasizing that psychological alignment precedes tangible performance outcomes.

Key Takeaways on Time-Unfolding Performance Gains

• Gradual Realization over Instant Impact:

  • The performance advantage driven by high leader confidence was not immediate; rather, it emerged progressively across the course of the competition.

  • Initial expressions of leader confidence establish the psychological foundation (building social identification and collective efficacy) before translating into physical motor execution and scoring efficiency.

• Alignment with Dynamic Leadership Models:

  • Supports dynamic frameworks of leader-follower influence (e.g., Sy, Choi, & Johnson, 2013), which emphasize that a leader's emotional tone and confidence signals unfold dynamically over time.

  • In task execution, the leader's projected belief in "us" manifests as measurable performance gains primarily during later, high-pressure, or cumulative stages of competition.

Practical Implications 3

Key Theoretical Interpretations

• The Pygmalion Effect (High Confidence Condition):

  • When the athlete leader expressed high confidence in the team's ability to win, team members lived up to these expectations, displaying progressive performance gains over the course of the session.

  • Methodological Caveat: As noted previously, because no neutral control group was present, part of this trajectory could reflect a natural learning effect over time.

• The Golem Effect (Low Confidence Condition):

  • The negative condition provided unambiguous evidence for a Golem effect: when the leader expressed conviction that the team would lose, members' performance degraded over time.

  • Strengthened Evidence: Because a natural learning/practice effect would typically improve performance, the observed performance decline under low-confidence leadership demonstrates an exceptionally potent Golem effect that actively overcame practice gains.

• Extension to the Team Level:

  • Prior organizational and educational research on Pygmalion and Golem effects focused almost exclusively on individual-level dynamics (e.g., a manager's expectations of a single employee; Kierein & Gold, 2000).

  • This study confirms that self-fulfilling prophecies operate powerfully at the collective level when an athlete leader expresses confidence (or lack thereof) in the entire unit.

• Uncovering the Underlying Psychological Mechanism:

  • Classic self-fulfilling prophecy literature offers limited insight into why these expectations alter performance.

  • By demonstrating the mediating role of team identification, this study clarifies the underlying mechanism: high leader expectations build a shared sense of "us," driving process confidence and performance. When a leader fails to build team identification, Pygmalion effects fail to materialize.

1. Advances Over Existing Literature

Advances Over Existing Literature

• Extension to the Team Level:

  • Prior organizational and educational research on Pygmalion and Golem effects focused almost exclusively on individual-level dynamics (e.g., a manager's expectations of a single employee; Kierein & Gold, 2000).

  • This study confirms that self-fulfilling prophecies operate powerfully at the collective level when an athlete leader expresses confidence (or lack thereof) in the entire unit.

• Uncovering the Underlying Psychological Mechanism:

  • Classic self-fulfilling prophecy literature offers limited insight into why these expectations alter performance.

  • By demonstrating the mediating role of team identification, this study clarifies the underlying mechanism: high leader expectations build a shared sense of "us," driving process confidence and performance. When a leader fails to build team identification, Pygmalion effects fail to materialize.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This final section of the paper outlines the methodological and contextual limitations of the study, offering a roadmap for future investigations into team confidence contagion.

1. Task Structure and Ecological Validity

• Highly Structured Setting: The experiment utilized a structured free-throw shooting task. While dynamic in tracking performance changes over time, future research should test these mechanisms in more fluid, organic performance environments.

• Task Interdependence: Exploring sports with high task interdependence (where players must constantly coordinate and rely on one another, such as basketball gameplay rather than isolated free throws) would likely reveal even more pronounced leadership effects (Van der Vegt & Janssen, 2003).

• Diverse Contexts: Replicating these findings across different sport disciplines, competitive levels, and natural (pre-existing) teams is essential to test generalizability.

2. Methodological Refinements: Control Groups

• The Need for a Neutral Condition: Future experimental designs should incorporate a neutral control group (with a leader acting neutrally or no leader present).

• Isolating Learning Effects: A neutral baseline would definitively separate performance increases driven by leader confidence from natural learning and practice effects over time.

• Valence Asymmetry: A control group would also clarify whether positive and negative leadership influences exert symmetrical or asymmetrical magnitudes of impact on team confidence and performance.

3. Nested Data Structures and Sample Size

• Small Team Limitation: Because players were nested in small groups of four (n=4), standard multilevel modeling could not be performed due to sample size constraints (Hox, 2002; Kreft, 1996).

• Future Designs: Subsequent research should employ larger team sizes to properly account for data interdependence within nested group structures.

4. Temporal Onset and Subtle Manipulation

• Abrupt Manipulation: The shift from a neutral warm-up to strong high/low confidence manipulation was abrupt, which may have initially caused team members to resist the leader's influence.

• Lagged Performance Impact: This initial resistance likely explains why leadership influence on objective performance was time-lagged, manifesting primarily in the final phase of the task.

• Gradual Implementation: Future studies could utilize more subtle, gradual changes in leader confidence to map the exact temporal unfolding of psychological contagion and performance shifts.