Testing the Effects of a Preceding Self-Control Task on Decision-Making in Soccer Refereeing.

Chris Englert,Geoffrey Schweizer,Anna Dziuba

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.638652

Abstract

The present study tested the assumption that the momentary level of self-control strength affects the accuracy rates in a sports-related judgment and decision-making task. A total of N = 27 participants rated the veracity of 28 video-taped statements of soccer players who were interviewed by a non-visible referee after a critical game-related situation. In half of the videos, the players were lying, and in the other half, they were telling the truth. Participants were tested twice: once with temporarily depleted self-control strength and once with temporarily available self-control strength (order counterbalanced; measurements separated by exactly 7 days). Self-control strength was experimentally manipulated with the Stroop task. In line with two-process models of information processing, we hypothesized that under ego depletion, information is processed in a rather heuristic manner, leading to lower accuracy rates. Contrary to our expectations, the level of temporarily available self-control strength did not have an effect on accuracy rates. Limitations and implications for future research endeavors are discussed.

Highlights

Deception in sports is a critical issue as it might decisively change the outcome of a match (Güldenpenning et al, 2017)
While research on deception has a long tradition in sports, and the ability to detect deceit and, especially, lies has been center stage in the criminal justice system (e.g., Akehurst et al, 1996) as well as in educational settings (e.g., Marksteiner et al, 2013) for many years, only recently has the topic of lie detection been addressed in sportsrelated contexts
Reinhard et al (2013) manipulated ego depletion and found out that ego-depleted participants were more likely to process information heuristically and displayed lower lie detection accuracy rates than nondepleted participants. Based on these empirical findings and theoretical assumptions, we assumed that individuals are more likely to process information heuristically if they had been working on a straining self-control task before

Summary

Introduction

Deception in sports is a critical issue as it might decisively change the outcome of a match (Güldenpenning et al, 2017). While research on deception has a long tradition in sports (for an overview see Güldenpenning et al, 2017), and the ability to detect deceit and, especially, lies has been center stage in the criminal justice system (e.g., Akehurst et al, 1996) as well as in educational settings (e.g., Marksteiner et al, 2013) for many years, only recently has the topic of lie detection been addressed in sportsrelated contexts. This seems rather surprising, given the high potential impact of “successfully” lying to a referee

Methods

Results

Conclusion