Playing with emotions: emotional complexity in the social world of elite tournament bridge

The concept of emotional complexity is vital to theorising emotions in late modernity. Building from decades ‘emotion management’ research, it captures how are increasingly an object for individual self-management and reflection. Using Goffman’s dramaturgy as a framing research sport leisure, this article contributes understanding practice using the dyadic pursuit mind-sport bridge case study. elite social world emotionally charged setting, where top players use emotion management improve performance over many decades. Through in-depth qualitative interviewing with 52 US Europe, outlines contextually specific experiences performances emotion. Players engage processes reflexive instrumental self-other relations, which change time part experience complexity. Successful can foster positive relationships between partners, but simultaneously also regularly fail manage their own emotions. This suggests that only ever partially instrumentalised, especially complex contexts.