An exploration of within-dyad interpersonal emotional influence in the ambulance service.

Abstract

Ambulance service personnel experience an array of emotions when working on shift. Nevertheless, there has been a lack of research to date regarding the interpersonal effects that frontline staff members’ emotional experiences and displays can have on their crewmates’ behavior and emotional state. This study used a critical realist research approach to explore the influential within-dyad effect of emotional exhibitions in frontline ambulance pairs. Ambulance service personnel (N = 18) were recruited to take part in individual interviews and to complete postshift voice diaries. Using abductive analysis methods, evidence for the emotions as social information (EASI) model processes, affective reactions and inferential processes, was presented through examples of self-reported interpersonal emotional transfer and emotional regulation. In addition, retroductive analysis of the interview and voice diary transcripts identified facilitative factors affecting the enaction of these social–emotional processes. The themes of understanding each other, managing emotions differently, expectations from above, and responding to different callouts were reported to contribute to the tendency for affective reactions and inferential processes to occur. These findings provide support for the impact that EASI model concepts can have in performance domains and offer evidence to suggest how these socially influential processes may be contextually facilitated. The results presented in this study can be used by ambulance service trusts to better understand and improve the emotional relationships of their frontline dyads.

The role of emotional convergence in sport: A scoping review.

“…As the encoding and decoding of emotional expressions are general prerequisites for the social impact of emotions (van Kleef & Côté, 2022), it is worth mentioning evidence from other fields that highlight the importance of addressing the interaction between the sender and the receiver of emotional expressions. For example, a study in the ambulance service indicates that personnel may differ widely in their tendencies to express emotions during work, which may have a strong impact on the emotional state of others (Freemantle et al, 2022b). Moreover, in the military context, it was shown that the relationship between transformational leadership (i.e., a leadership style characterized by inspiration and encouragement) and the job involvement was stronger for those subordinates with a high emotional contagion susceptibility (Cheng et al, 2012).…”

Advancing open science and methodological rigor in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology.

“…A unique feature of the journal is its focus on performance psychology, which includes sport and physical activity settings, but also in other performance domains as well. Recent examples include the development and evaluation of a novel resilience-enhanced reflection protocol within military settings (Chapman et al, 2022), a meta-analytic test of trust formation and development within swift starting action teams (Lines et al, 2022), an experimental study designed to examine the effects of goal types on cognitive performance (Pilcher et al, 2022), and a qualitative study designed to examine the interpersonal emotional experiences of ambulance service dyads when working shifts together (Freemantle et al, 2022). It is my hope that performance-based research conducted in such settings (e.g., military, health care, performing arts) will advance, but also be advanced by, innovative inquiry in sport and physical activity settings.…”