A.CAMPOS # 114 Y RUMICHACA, CONDOMINIO ZARUMA, PISO 2, OFICINA

Strengths

The first strength of this study is the applied context in which dehumanisation was measured. Many previous studies exploring dehumanisation have not sought to explore it within applied settings, and instead examined it within experimental-based studies, without specific inclusion criteria for participants (e.g. Lammers & Stapel, 2010; Bastian & Haslam, 2010; Bastian et al., 2012; Bastian & Haslam, 2011; Haslam & Bain, 2007; Moller & Deci, 2009). As a result of specifically exploring sports coaches as a sample, a clearer understanding of how this population engage with forms of dehumanisation has been developed.

Moreover, by setting broad inclusion criteria for coaches in the study, the findings attempt to achieve some level of generalisability for sports coaches. This responds to Potts et al.’s (2019) contention that empirical sports coaching literature has focused almost exclusively on the experiences of full-time paid male coaches, thus leading to a biased evidence base. Therefore, with wider inclusion criteria in respect to the sport, level, gender and experience of coaches that participated in the study, the generalisability of the findings was enhanced.

The findings of the study are also a key strength. In part, this is because they contradict previous research and thus, as suggested, highlight a need for further research, but also because they may make a contribution to informing how we can potentially improve the mental health of sports coaches.

Limitations and future research directions

To start, despite broad inclusion criteria, the homogeneity within the sample of coaches highlights one limitation of this study. 86% of the sample were male, 93% were white British and 94% were football coaches, indicating a need for more diversity in future research, if greater generalizability within the findings is desirable.

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One additional limitation of this study is that within Part 2 of the questionnaire (completed after a selection decision), the perceived stress of the selection decision was not measured. Dehumanisation was conceptualised as a potential coping method for this theorised stress, and without measuring how stressful the selection decision was for each coach, the ‘need to cope’ and thus, the ‘need to dehumanise’ could not be reported. As such, relationships between stress and dehumanisation, which may have been indicative of dehumanisation’s employment as a coping mechanism, were not explored. Therefore, it would be recommended that future research exploring dehumanisation as a potential coping method for the stress of a team selection decision includes a measure for this. Such research may also provide quantitative data on specific stressors experienced by coaches.

With respect to the potential effectiveness of dehumanisation as a coping method, within Part 2 of the questionnaire it would have also been beneficial to measure coaches’ mental wellbeing. This would have provided greater insight into whether or not coaches’ mental wellbeing changed in accordance with their engagement with dehumanisation. Moreover, this would have facilitated a more detailed understanding of whether or not dehumanisation has adaptive properties, and could therefore be classed as an effective coping technique. As such, another future research direction includes the recommendation of assessing mental wellbeing pre and post events involving dehumanisation, as one way to assess the effectiveness of coping methods more broadly could be through changes in mental wellbeing.

Concerning the measures used in this study, the measure for mechanistic dehumanisation was unreliable, limiting the interpretations from the findings relating to it. One of the reasons attributed to this lack of reliability was the wording of the questions included, for example “I consider the athletes as a means to an end.” Wording of questions like this was theorised to be socially undesirable, in that coaches completing questionnaires would not want to ‘admit’ to perceive athletes in this way, or even, coaches may not have been aware that they perceived athletes like this. Thus, it would be beneficial for future

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research to adapt, or develop a new measure tailored to the subtleties of dehumanisation in sport, cognisant of the range of ways in which dehumanisation occur and the ways in which coaches feel they ‘should’ behave.

Moreover, coaches were requested to fill out Part 2 of the questionnaire “within 24 hours of making a team selection decision”, yet, there was not a procedure put in place to ensure this was done. As such, there is no guarantee that coaches responded with respect to how they felt within 24 hours of making a team selection decision. Therefore, future research exploring similar concepts may employ methods to ensure that participants complete questionnaires within a direct timeframe.

One further limitation from this study concerns the lack of methods implemented to assess a causal relationship between dehumanisation, resilience, emotional intelligence, personal sense of power, relatedness and mental wellbeing. This study reported that there is a relationship between them and noted the strength and directions of the correlations, yet, to have stronger applied findings, knowledge of a causal relationship would have been beneficial. Thus, an additional area recommended for future research is an exploration into the cause and effect within the relationship between these concepts. However, it should be noted that an ethical challenge would be presented in trying to manipulate this experimentally, given the knowledge that there are negative outcomes. An investigation on this would provide stronger applied recommendations than this current study, as it would offer information on where coach education programmes should direct their focus. Specifically, knowledge surrounding how to increase relatedness, resilience and emotional intelligence would facilitate a greater understanding of how mental wellbeing can be enhanced.

Linked to this is the recommendation that a review of current psychological content taught on coach education programmes would be beneficial. To be precise, knowledge of currently what and how psychological content, specifically to protect coach mental wellbeing, is delivered on coach education programmes would be fruitful to explore. This

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is because it would facilitate more explicit knowledge on where the gaps may currently lie within these programmes and thus, how new information may be effectively integrated.

Finally, investigations into who is dehumanised and how this dehumanisation takes place would be a recommended area for further research. This study explored what types of dehumanisation take place (e.g. animalistic and mechanistic dehumanisation of a group of athletes and self-dehumanisation from a coach). However, there is potential that individual athletes are dehumanised in different ways and therefore, why and how this occurs and what the associated impacts are, would be a potential area for future research. Here, we presented provisional data exploring gender effects. Other key areas, especially those linked with other-dehumanisation might include race, for example, alongside the contextual aspects that have been shown to constitute humanness from coaches’ perspectives, as outlined in this study. It is also recommended that exploration of how dehumanisation occurs in practice should not be exclusive to what aspects of humanness are denied, but also what this looks like in practice (e.g. specific uses of language and/or ostracising behaviour). Thus, given dehumanisation’s negative relationship with mental wellbeing, knowledge of how dehumanisation occurs in practice, specifically within sporting settings, could support coach education programmes in providing behavioural advice for coaches. This would enable coaches to ensure their coaching remains effective, in line with the adapted definition of coaching effectiveness outlined in the introduction to this study.

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Concluding remarks

This study set out to explore whether dehumanisation could be employed as an effective coping mechanism for sport coaches, in relieving the stress associated with a team selection decision. In doing so, factors predicted to influence a coach’s engagement with forms of dehumanisation were measured. The outcome of the hypotheses and associated findings indicated that dehumanisation does not significantly change following a team selection decision, yet personal factors did significantly influence coaches’ engagement with dehumanisation. The personal factors found to predict coaches’ engagement with dehumanisation included a coach’s personal sense of power, relatedness, resilience and emotional intelligence. Crucially, however, dehumanisation was found to negatively predict mental wellbeing, implying that it may not be an effective coping method and all three forms may not have adaptive properties. Moreover, this study also suggested one’s tendency to engage with dehumanisation is trait-driven rather than context-driven. Taken together, these findings offer implications beyond sport as the context in which dehumanisation occurs appears to have minimal influence, so given information about individuals specific traits, one would be able to predict their engagement with dehumanisation, and potentially their mental wellbeing.

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