Contextual influences on baseball ball-strike decisions in umpires, players, and controls

Abstract

Baseball umpires, players, and control participants with no baseball experience were asked to call balls and strikes for video clips. In a basic judgement task, umpires and players were significantly better at calling pitches than controls. In a direct information task, borderline pitches were presented following clips of definite balls and definite strikes. Participants called target pitches closer to the strike end of the scale when viewed after definite balls than when they followed definite strikes. Similarly, when borderline pitches were shown in different pitch counts, participants called pitches more towards the strike end of the scale when there were three balls in the count (3–0, 3–2). These findings indicate that the standard for evaluation changes based on the context in which stimuli are processed. Moreover, the strength of the contextual factors is illustrated in that the effects were shown in observers with and without experience in the task. Overall, however, umpires had a greater tendency to call strikes, indicating that they may use a norm of “hastening the game”.

Keywords:

• Expertise
• decision making
• baseball umpiring
• sequential and contextual effects

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted while Clare MacMahon was part of the Department of Psychology, Florida State University, and made possible by a post-doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors would like to thank John Cullen for his contributions to the design and filming of video, Neil Charness for his feedback and contributions to this research, as well as Jason Convissar, Kyle Eldredge, Eric Martinez, Lauren Ochs, and Abigail Winkler for their assistance in data collection. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the Hamilton Thunderbirds baseball team, the Harry Wendelstedt Umpiring School, and Bill Tunney and the Hamilton Baseball Umpire's Association.