Affective Responses Mediate the Body Language of Penalty Taker – Decision-Making Relationship from Soccer Goalkeepers

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that penalty-takers’ body language affects the impressions that goalkeepers form about them and their anticipation performance. This research aimed to replicate these results and test the mediating effect of threat/challenge responses on the relationship between impression formation and the quality of goalkeeper decision-making. Methods and Results: We report 2 experiments. The first showed that participants (goalkeepers) form more positive impressions and have a lower expectation of success from dominant penalty-takers than submissive penalty-takers, and the second showed under pressure conditions that goalkeepers‘ decision-making was significantly less accurate against dominant players than against submissive players. In addition, we found that the more goalkeepers perceived the penalty-taker as competent, the more threatened they felt; conversely, the less they perceived the penalty-taker as competent, the more challenged they felt. Conclusion: Finally, our analysis showed that participants’ cognitive appraisal (challenge vs. threat) influenced the quality of their decision-making and played a partial mediating role in the relationship between impression formation and decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Decision-making
• impression formation
• soccer penalty
• threat/challenge

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleague Franck Taiana, specialist teacher of soccer goalkeepers, for his participation in the development of the video material.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The independent nature of the effects of body posture and impression formation on cognitive appraisal is supported by an additional mediation analysis showing that the effect of body posture on cognitive appraisal was only partially mediated by impression formation. When cognitive appraisal was regressed on body posture and impression formation, the analysis showed a significant relationship between body posture and cognitive appraisal, t (1397) = 6.12, p < .001, β = .21, and between impression formation and cognitive appraisal, t (1397) = −15,34, p < .001, β = −.51.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.