Psychological Perspectives

[Hartsy]

Originally Posted by LRZ

I had several games over the weekend where, not surprisingly, coaches and players "saw" things differently than I did, and I began to wonder: has anyone ever seen any studies of bias and perspective? That is, analyses of if and why people see what they want to see, rather than what is really in front of them?

If so, and you could provide a link or some such, I'd be interested in reading them, although the phenomenon would not surprise any sports official.

There has been a lot written about phenomenon called Confirmation Bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. Most often around emotionally charged circumstances.

[LRZ]

Thanks, that's along the lines I was wondering about.

[frezer11]

Originally Posted by LRZ

I had several games over the weekend where, not surprisingly, coaches and players "saw" things differently than I did, and I began to wonder: has anyone ever seen any studies of bias and perspective? That is, analyses of if and why people see what they want to see, rather than what is really in front of them?

If so, and you could provide a link or some such, I'd be interested in reading them, although the phenomenon would not surprise any sports official.

Originally Posted by Hartsy

There has been a lot written about phenomenon called Confirmation Bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. Most often around emotionally charged circumstances.

Man it's funny you bring this up, I was thinking about the same thing this weekend. I had a game in which we called 2 travels in 4 possessions or something like that on the home team, and after the 2nd call, coach was saying something to the effect that the other team was doing the same thing (they weren't, not even close.) But of course for the next several minutes, the coach would yell travel at anything he felt was even close, and I started wondering what sort of proof there was for magically seeing something like that when you are specifically looking for it. Psychology is pretty cool stuff...

[BatteryPowered]

Originally Posted by frezer11

Man it's funny you bring this up, I was thinking about the same thing this weekend. I had a game in which we called 2 travels in 4 possessions or something like that on the home team, and after the 2nd call, coach was saying something to the effect that the other team was doing the same thing (they weren't, not even close.) But of course for the next several minutes, the coach would yell travel at anything he felt was even close, and I started wondering what sort of proof there was for magically seeing something like that when you are specifically looking for it. Psychology is pretty cool stuff...

And then there is the sage perspective of Ron White:

"You can't fix stupid."

[Adam]

Originally Posted by BatteryPowered

And then there is the sage perspective of Ron White:

"You can't fix stupid."

No, but fortunately we have the ability to silence it in these cases.

[TimTaylor]

Originally Posted by Adam

No, but fortunately we have the ability to silence it in these cases.

There is that!

Seriously, the coaches, players and fans are all susceptible to confirmation bias as previously mentioned, as they all have some type of vested interest in the outcome. The only people in the gym that don't have a vested interest in the outcome are the officials.

[Dad]

Originally Posted by frezer11

Man it's funny you bring this up, I was thinking about the same thing this weekend. I had a game in which we called 2 travels in 4 possessions or something like that on the home team, and after the 2nd call, coach was saying something to the effect that the other team was doing the same thing (they weren't, not even close.) But of course for the next several minutes, the coach would yell travel at anything he felt was even close, and I started wondering what sort of proof there was for magically seeing something like that when you are specifically looking for it. Psychology is pretty cool stuff...

I don't know about cool, but at least I'm happy my grad program works for something -- coaches.