Judgment, Decision-making and Success in Sport

Judgment, Decision-Making and Success in Sport presents a thorough overview and assessment of the study of Judgment and Decision-Making (JDM) in sports psychology, and represents an important source of information for those interested in the possible causes and reasons for success and failure in sport.

• The only book to apply the principles of JDM to sport
• Applies theory to practice by looking at problems of athletes, coaches, and referees and providing recommendations for dealing with them
• Offers an overview of current JDM research
• Useful for psychologists, physical education teachers, sports scientists, and researchers in this field

Preface vii

Judgement and Decision Making as a Topic of Sport Science 1

Maximization and optimization in sport 3

JDM history 4

The development of JDM research in sport 6

Rationale and structure of this book 10

Theories of (Social) Judgement 13

Psychophysics 16

Social judgement theory 18

Social cognition 19

Summary 25

Theories of Decision Making 27

Subjective expected utility theory 31

Prospect theory 32

Decisional field theory 33

Simple heuristic approach 35

Summary 37

Expertise in JDM 39

What are the components of expertise in JDM? 42

How can we measure JDM expertise? 43

How can we explain JDM expertise? 46

How can we develop JDM expertise? 47

Summary 48

Athletes 51

Judging one’s own performance 53

What choices are athletes confronted with? 59

How do athletes choose? 66

JDM training for athletes 78

Summary 89

Managers and Coaches 91

JDM as a leadership task 93

Managerial JDM 95

Coaches’ JDM 108

Summary 121

Referees 123

The tasks of referees 126

Perceptual limitations 127

Prior knowledge 132

Rules of information integration 136

Improving referees’ JDM 139

Summary 143

Observers 145

Biases in judgements of sport performance 148

Predictions and betting 154

Summary 160

References 163

Author Index 189

Subject Index 201

Michael Bar-Eli is the Nat Holman Chair in Sports Research at the Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management and Head of the Management Studies program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is also Senior Vice President of the Asian-South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology.

Henning Plessner is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Leipzig. His main research areas are Judgment and Decision-Making in sports and the psychology of intuition.

Markus Raab is Department Head of Performance Psychology at the German Sport University Cologne. He is Editor of the German Journal of Sport Psychology, Section Editor of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, and Editorial Board Member of Psychology of Sport and Exercise.

What determines 'success' and 'failure' in sports? Clearly, good judgment and decision-making play a crucial role in influencing sporting outcomes, and in determining the success or failure of individual athletes, teams, coaches, and referees alike. But what do we really know about the implications of judgment and decision-making on sport?

Judgment, Decision-Making and Success in Sport introduces the fundamental approaches of Judgment and Decision-Making (JDM) research in psychology and applies them directly to a variety of JDM problems in sport. In addition to presenting a general overview of the field, several specific judgment and decision-making problems encountered by athletes, coaches, managers, and referees are considered, and recommendations are made for their effective resolution. Among the many topics addressed are the evaluation of athletic performance; motivational and emotional judgments; optimizing judgment processes; the decisions of coaches, managers, and referees; and the prediction of sports results. Enlightening and informative, Judgment, Decision-Making and Success in Sport illustrates the exciting potential of the application of JDM to the world of sports.

A comprehensive source of knowledge derived from the most influential, diverse, and reliable theoretical and experimental references. The authors describe complex concepts, and their applications, in a simple and easy-to-understand language, which benefit both the expert and novice scholars. Judgment, Decision-Making and Success in Sport is a book recommended to all those who wish to further their knowledge and understanding of performers’ behaviors and achievements.
—Gershon T Gershon Tenenbaum, Benjamin S. Bloom Professor, Florida State University, USA