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In a Flash: Thin Slice Judgment Accuracy of Leading and Trailing in Sports

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Abstract

Humans can detect whether athletes are leading or trailing based on thin slices of athletes’ nonverbal behavior, presumably because communicating and interpreting status has evolved to be highly beneficial for humans. The goal of the present research was to examine this evolutionary perspective on nonverbal behavior in sports. First, in Experiment 1 (N = 40), we investigated if leading athletes are rated higher on dimensions related to social status than are trailing athletes. Experiment 1 showed that perceivers rated leading athletes as more dominant, more proud, and more confident than trailing athletes, without being aware of the actual score. Second, we were interested in the role of head-related versus body-related information and in the role of dynamic versus static information. In Experiment 2, 120 participants watched short videos from basketball matches and rated whether athletes were leading or trailing. We occluded either athletes’ faces, athletes’ bodies, or showed both faces and bodies. Experiments 2 and 3 (N = 160) showed that very scarce information was sufficient for differentiating between leading and trailing athletes, even when faces or bodies were occluded. These findings are in line with ecological approaches to person perception and evolutionary accounts of nonverbal behavior.

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Notes

  1. In order to maximize transparency in the conducted research we provide hyperlinks to the stimulus material utilized in the studies. Note that the software randomly selected and displayed the stimulus material from the video stream according to the described procedure and not as shown in the video streams: Videoclips (head-and-body-group): http://youtu.be/kDuLEpqLZ7c. Videoclips (head-only-group): http://youtu.be/sQzjxr2pY4E. Videoclips (body-only-group): http://youtu.be/6LxtNZgyRnc. Frozen frames (head-and-body-group): http://youtu.be/YZgZQfFSpVQ. Frozen frames (head-only-group): http://youtu.be/hdDd_hSIlJI. Frozen frames (body-only-group): http://youtu.be/kNwBx8In8XU.

  2. Where the assumption of sphericity was violated, we used conservative Greenhouse-Geisser corrections for calculation of degrees of freedom in all ANOVAs.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Fanny Zimmermann, Daniel Link, Nicolas Schwölm, Leo Bolender, and Wolfgang Walther for helping with the data collection and programming in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933, Cologne, Germany

    Philip Furley

  2. Department of Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 720, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Geoffrey Schweizer

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  1. Philip Furley
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Correspondence to Philip Furley.

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Furley, P., Schweizer, G. In a Flash: Thin Slice Judgment Accuracy of Leading and Trailing in Sports. J Nonverbal Behav 40, 83–100 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-015-0225-5

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