Dr. Svenja A. Wolf

"EVERYTHING IS AWESOME WHEN YOU'RE PART OF A TEAM!(?)"

At the most basic level, I love anything that has to do with teams, emotions, and work to apply my research expertise on these topics in my supervision, teaching, and practice. I strongly believe in quality over quantity along the lines of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, and national boundaries. As such, a key vehicle for my work is my research team, the Laboratory for Emotions in Groups and Organizations (LEGO).

GROUP DYNAMICS x EMOTIONS: MY RESEARCH FOCI

More specifically, my research centers on the intersection of group dynamics and emotions in sport and other performance contexts such as performing arts and high-pressure work-settings. Across all of my research, I aim to work from strong theoretical frameworks, employ a variety of designs (e.g., multilevel field studies; field, lab, and online experiments; case studies) and methods (e.g., questionnaires, observations, interviews, performance data analyses), implement sound scientific procedures in the form of research transparency and open science, and ensure high ecological validity and relevance.

COLLECTIVE EMOTIONS: In my main line of research, I focus on the phenomenon of collective emotions. Here, I work to provide evidence for the existence of collective emotions in performance contexts (e.g., statistical agreement of member responses, convergent non-verbal behaviors), their task-related and social functionality (e.g., for teamwork and social integration), relevant boundary factors (e.g., discrete emotions, timely dynamics, emotion norms), and the underlying mechanisms that cause emotional congruence and convergence (e.g., emotional leadership, emotional conformity). 

A guiding factor in this and all of my emotion work is the idea that emotions are innately functional phenomena and instead of avoiding and suppressing them, we can harness them to benefit individual and team functioning.

SOCIAL INDISPENSABILITY: In one of my secondary research lines, I combine literatures on social motivation and performance under pressure and investigate the possible ambivalent influences of social indispensability. Specifically, I hypothesize that social indispensability induces pressure (e.g., not to let the team down), which is an asset if it enhances volition, effort, and ultimately performance on effort-based (conditioning) tasks such as distance running, but which is a detriment if it enhances self-focus, conscious control, and ultimately reduces performance on skill-based (coordination) tasks such as target shooting. 

HIGH-STAKES GROUP DECISION-MAKING: In another of my secondary research lines, I explore the phenomenology and structure, quality and consequences, and individual, group, leader, organizational, and contextual influences of group decisions in high-stakes contexts. Specifically, I investigate group decisions in mountaineering via literature review, expert interviews, case studies, and cross-sectional surveys. Although groups can make better decisions than members, often they fall prey to adverse phenomena like groupthink or group-polarization that not only reduce performance but can also cost lives.

Sample References

You can find a full record of my (collaborative) work under my ORCiD [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5522-7972], but the following might be some helpful references to get you started:

Wolf, S. A., & Utesch, K. (2024). Everything is cool when you're part of a team? The effects of outcome interdependence on appraisal, emotions, and performance under pressure. Psychology of Sport & Exercise, 74, 102683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102683

Wolf, S. A., Heerdink, M. W., & van Kleef, G. A. (2023). A motivational account of convergence in emotion expressions within groups: The Emotional Conformity Framework. Emotion Review, 15(4), 363-379. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739231182241

Tamminen, K. A., Wolf, S. A., Dunn, R., & Bissett, J. E. (2022). A review of the interpersonal experience, expression, and regulation of emotions in sport. International Review of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 1-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2022.2132526

SUSTAINABLE + AUTONOMOUS PERFORMANCE: MY APPROACH TO SUPERVISION, TEACHING, AND PRACTICE

In my supervision, teaching, and practice, I try to implement my research knowledge actively and use group dynamics and emotion principles to ensure student motivation and success and effective knowledge transfer and exchange.

SUPERVISION

In line with the principles of transformational leadership, I aim to be a role model to the master's and PhD students I supervise (also with regard to the necessity and boundaries to a life outside of academia). I expect my students to pursue innovative and impactful research projects and commit to mentoring and supporting them in ways that are necessary to achieve this. Also, I hope to inspire my students to develop an intrinsic interest in their work, make this a priority, and aspire to make a difference in the field. Whereas it is a precondition for our collaboration that their interests fit with my general lines of research, I strive to balance direction and guidance with intellectual freedom and executive independence.

I will be accepting two new PhD students for Fall 2025. Thus, if you are interest (also in my topical profile and supervisory style), I encourage you to contact me for further information.

Teaching

In my course-based teaching, I strive to harness the benefits of teamwork, such as social motivation and backing up behaviors, and instigate a growth-oriented, non-perfectionistic climate. In line with my dedication to transformational leadership, I challenge my students intellectually and encourage them to strive for skills and knowledge, rather than grades and credentials. I work to help students become evidence-based practitioners, possessing the ability to identify, source, and use high-quality research evidence and theory, and application-conscious researchers, being able to translate knowledge and findings to real-life audiences.

Within our Sport Psychology program, I teach the primarily research-oriented "Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Performance Settings" and "Group Dynamics in Sport", the primarily practice-oriented courses "Applied Sport Psychology" and "Case Studies in Organizational Sport and Performance Psychology”, and our Sport Psychology Research Colloquium.

PRACTICE

I am a strong proponent of research and practice integration and believe that both are better if they communicate and work with the other. This will lead to more valid and relevant research and more reliable and replicable practice. Being certified with the German Association of Sport Psychology, I have consulted with sport organizations, coaches and other leadership personnel, athletes across the age spectrum, as well as industry and community stakeholders. Currently, I focus on advancing research-practice integration via respective publications, initiatives (e.g., Florida State Open Publishing [https://publishing.lib.fsu.edu]), education materials, and my own knowledge translation (e.g., as part of our LEGO Coach website).

THERE + BACK AGAIN: MY TRAINING AND BACKGROUND

I joined Florida State University and the Sport Psychology program in 2020 and moved to Tallahassee in the summer of 2021. Until then, I worked as a Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, my home country, and enjoyed prime access to the local mountainside. This, I missed terribly during the previous five years having worked at the University of Amsterdam in the aptly named Netherlands. I spent two years as an Assistant Professor in the Work and Organizational Psychology program and three years as a Postdoc with the Social Psychology program. Before moving to Amsterdam, I spent a year as a Postdoc with the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Previously, I had completed my PhD in Sport Science with a specialization in Sport Psychology at the German Sport University Cologne and as a visiting scholar at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada.