How Embodied Cognitions Affect Judgments: Height-Related Attribution Bias in Football Foul Calls

7/30/2019 How Embodied Cognitions Affect Judgments: Height-Related Attribution Bias in Football Foul Calls

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Original research

Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 2010, 32, 3-22

2010 Human Kinetics, Inc.

How Embodied Cognitions AffectJudgments: Height-Related

Attribution Bias in Football Foul Calls

Niels van Quaquebeke and Steffen R. Giessner

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Many fouls committed in football (called soccerin some countries) are ambigu-

ous, and there is no objective way of determining who is the true perpetrator or

the true victim. Consequently, fans as well as referees often rely on a variety of

decision cues when judging such foul situations. Based on embodiment research,

which links perceptions of height to concepts of strength, power, and aggression,

we argue that height is going to be one of the decision cues used. As a result,

people are more likely to attribute a foul in an ambiguous tackle situation to the

taller of two players. We nd consistent support for our hypothesis, not only in eld

data spanning the last seven UEFA Champions League and German Bundesligaseasons, as well as the last three FIFA World Cups, but also in two experimental

studies. The resulting dilemma for refereeing in practice is discussed.

Keywords: dominance, power, refereeing, decision making, decision cue, infor-

mation processing

Whereas some popular team sports, such as rugby or American football, usevideo replays in slow motion and from different angles to assist referees in makingjudgments in ambiguous situations, the Fdration Internationale de Football Asso-

ciation (FIFA)as the overarching ruling body for football (also called soccer, acolloquial abbreviation of the term association football)still takes a conservativestand on the use of referee-assisting technology (FIFA, 2007; Warshaw, 2006). Theirargument is that such means provide an illusion of technical objectivity when infact they might induce other kinds of errors or distortions to the game. Thus, to thisdate, football referees often rely on a variety of (sometimes foul-unrelated) deci-sion cues to make sense of ambiguous contact situations (Mascarenhas, OHare,& Plessner, 2006). Among such cues found to inuence foul judgments in profes-sional sports are, for example, the color of a players uniform (Frank & Gilovich,1988; Tiryaki, 2005), preceding foul judgments (Plessner & Betsch, 2001), a teams

reputation (Jones, Paull, & Erskine, 2002), and crowd noise (Nevill, Balmer, &Williams, 2002). Another potential cue that might affect foul judgments has yet to


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4 Van Quaquebeke and Giessner

In this respect, embodiment theories of cognition provide a useful theoreticalframework to argue for an automatic association between perceptions of height anddominance. These theories are based on recent advances in cognitive psychology

demonstrating that humans ground their conceptual thinking perceptually (Barsalou,1999, 2008; Glenberg, 1997; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Kraut-Gruber, &Ric, 2005). In other words, peoples mental representations of abstract concepts(such as dominance and power) are embodied in modal information about spaceand the body (such as height). Hence, thoughts about power and dominance areautomatically connected to a vertical dimension in space. When people thinkabout power, they automatically interpret up, above, and large as cues for power,and down, below, and small as cues for powerlessness (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).Such an association of physical height and dominance seems so deeply rooted inbasic human cognitions that it is even present across cultures (Fiske, 1992). Recentempirical evidence provides additional support for these arguments by showingthat concept and modality congruencies inuence the ease of judgmental processes(Meier, Hauser, Robinson, Friesen, & Schjeldahl, 2007; Schubert, 2005; Schubert,Waldzus, & Giessner, 2009) as well as the memory of events and judgments (Giess-ner & Schubert, 2007).

By and large, such embodiment theorizing draws on an evolutionary perspec-tive when arguing that height is associated with dominance and power (Cawley,Joyner, & Sobal, 2006; Goodall, 1986; Schuett, 1997). Indeed, this more or lessinstinct-driven association is a vital survival mechanism for many animal species.

A decision to ght or ee, for example, is often determined by height comparison(Archer, 1988; Parker, 1974). Moreover, among humans the instinctive associa-tion between height and dominance (Schwartz, Tesser, & Powell, 1982; Weinraub& Putney, 1978) is reinforced through socially driven learning (Chaiken, 1986;Zebrowitz, 1996). Children, for instance, learn to associate the superiority of adultswith adults advantage in height (Montepare, 1995). The same height-dominanceassociation is further consolidated through experience when taller children usetheir physical superiority to coerce smaller children (Olweus, 1978), or when talleradults use their physical advantage to demonstrate dominance and gain superiority(Felson, 1996; Judge & Cable, 2004).

The theoretical account described above thus provides a solid basis for theclaim that the association between physical height and dominance is automaticand can inuence judgment processes. However, while the cognitive association ofheight and dominance has received considerable attention in empirical research, itremains yet to be shown how such a cognitive association might affect individualdecision making, in particular, decision making that is of practical relevance (seeBaumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007).

The aim of the present set of studies was thus to investigate whether peoplescognitive association of height and dominance will affect their judgments in sports.Particularly, we hypothesize an attribution bias in foul calls such that taller people

are likely to be perceived as foul perpetrators and their smaller opponents as foulvictims. We refer to this phenomenon as an attribution bias because it is an

t i iti i ti th t t t ti ll ff t l


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Height-Related Bias in Foul Calls 5

We chose football as the context of our studies because the sport often yieldsambiguous foul situations in which it is difcult to determine the perpetrator (cf.Andersen, Engebretsen, & Bahr, 2004; Fuller, Junge, & Dvorak, 2004). In such

situations, people must rely on their instincts to make a call, which shouldincrease the use and thus the detectability of a height as an additional decision cue.Furthermore, the use of referee assistance technology and adequate referee trainingis frequently debated in association football. Thus, by providing scientic insightson potential biases in refereeing, our work might help ofcials weigh the options.

Overview of the Studies

To test our hypothesis that the association of height and dominance leads to a

height-related attribution bias when judging football calls, we acquired professionalfootball refereeing data (i.e., all recorded fouls in the last seven years of GermanBundesliga, in the last seven years of the Union of European Football Associations(UEFA) Champions League, and in the last three FIFA World Cups). To triangulatethese ndings and provide more controlled evidence for the hypothesized effect, weadditionally conducted two experiments in which we presented participants withambiguous foul scenarios and asked for their foul judgments.

Study 1

Methods

Sample. To obtain evidence whether the proposed effect is at all visible in theeld, we obtained ofcial football foul statistics for seven German Bundesligaseasons, spanning from 2000/01 to 2006/07 (N = 85,262); for seven UEFAChampions League seasons, spanning from 2000/01 to 2006/07 (N= 32,142);and the last three FIFA World Cup tournamentsin 1998, 2002, and 2006 (N=6,440). We purchased these records from Impire AG, a commercial organizationthat professionally collects and codes statistical data related to football. The dataincluded individual fouls with information on the physical height of the perpetrator

and victim of each foul. However, in 165 cases of the UEFA Champions Leaguedata set and in 369 cases of the FIFA World Championship data set, physical heightinformation was missing.

Results

We conducted separate analyses on the Bundesliga, Champions League, and WorldChampionship data sets. More precisely, we conducted a 2 (player height: perpe-trator vs. victim) 7 (season) ANOVA with repeated measures on the rst factoron the Bundesliga and Champions League data sets. On the World Cups data set,

we conducted a 2 (player height: perpetrator vs. victim) 3 (tournament) ANOVAwith repeated measures on the rst factor.


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6 Van Quaquebeke and Giessner

increased over the years (as shown later in Table 3). More importantly, the analysisyielded a signicant effect of player height, F(1, 85,255) = 979.70,p < .001,

p

2= .01. As hypothesized, foul perpetrators were on average taller (M = 182.82, SD

= 6.10 cm) than foul victims (M = 181.94, SD = 6.30 cm). The analysis yieldedno interaction effect, F(6, 85,255) = 1.15,p = .33,

p2 < .001. In addition, simple

effect analyses within seasons indicated that the main effect of player height issignicant within each season.

The analysis of the UEFA Champions League data set also yielded a signi-cant main effect of season, F(6, 31,970) = 17.43,p < .001,

p2 = .003. Similar to

the German Bundesliga data set, there is a trend that the average players heightincreased over the years, with the exception of the last championship season (Table3). More importantly, we again found a signicant effect of player height, F(1,31,970) = 299.55,p < .001,

p

2 = .01. As hypothesized, foul perpetrators were onaverage taller (M = 181.37, SD = 5.84 cm) than foul victims (M = 180.59, SD =5.96 cm). The analysis yielded no interaction effect, F(6, 31,970) = 1.10,p = .36,

p2 < .001. In addition, simple effect analyses within seasons indicated that the

main effect of player height is signicant within each season (Table 1).Finally, the analysis of the FIFA World Cups data set also yielded a signicant

effect with respect to year of the world championship, F(2, 6,068) = 3.00,p = .05,

p

2 = .001. Similar to the German Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League datasets, this might be a reection of the fact that the average players height compet-ing in the World Cup seems to have increased over the years, with the exception

of the last championship season (Table 1). More importantly for the objective ofthis article, we also found in the FIFA World Cup data set that foul perpetratorswere on average taller (M = 180.92, SD = 6.02 cm) than foul victims (M = 180.18,SD = 6.25 cm), F(1, 6,068) = 52.31, p < .001,

p

2 = .009. The analysis yieldedno interaction effect, F(2, 6,068) = 1.70,p = .18,

p2 < .001. In addition, simple

effect analyses within World Cups indicate that the main effect of player height issignicant within all three World Cups (Table 1).

A possible concern regarding our eld data results is that the relationshipbetween height and fouls might actually result from the nature of players respectivetactical positions (i.e., goal keeper, defense, mideld, forward). Potentially taller

defense players have to stop potentially smaller forward players, if necessary evenby means of a foul. Table 2 provides some evidence for such a height differencebetween tactical positions; however, please note that because the present data setcontains only information about players who were involved in a called foul play,we are unable to determine the average height of players on different tacticalpositions in general. To investigate the matter of tactical positions further, we thusplotted the amount of fouls by tactical position of perpetrators against the positionof foul victims (Table 3). These results suggest that most of the fouls were actuallycommitted by the relatively small mideld players fouling other mideld players.Moreover, we do nd that defense players foul forward players the most, but also

the reverse picture in that forward also foul defense players the most. Ultimately,to rule out that tactical positions might be the explaining factor responsible forth f d ff t f h i ht t d t h f iti i bl th t i di t


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FoulStatisticsinAssociationFootball

PlayerHeight(incm)

Perpetrators

Victims

InferentialStatistics

M

SD

M

SD

N

F

p

p

2

Bundesliga

182.5

5

5.5

5

181.7

4

5.8

2

12,3

39

120.7

5

Documents

How Embodied Cognitions Affect Judgments: Height-Related Attribution Bias in Football Foul Calls