Thomas Baxter

February 19th, 2014

Dr. Mullins
Nonverbal Communication in Competitive Sports
Most of us, at some point through our childhood, were placed in a team or individual
sport by their parents, such as soccer or tennis. It starts out as innocent fun for children, but
quickly turns competitive as the children develop skills. While most of us would love to be
winners 100 percent of the time, it is just the harsh reality of competitive sports that not
everybody can win, and we have all experienced what it is like to be on both sides of the
scoreboard. This study highlights the effects that competitive sports have on athletes non-verbal
communication, if people spectating a team or individual sport can accurately predict who is
winning and who is losing (without knowledge of the score) based solely off of the players body
language, as well as if these trends change between different spectating age groups (2013,
pg.13). This is an important study because it will further show how humans, communicate
important social information (pg.14) nonverbally while participating in competitive sports, and
how other humans perceive their body language.
This study illustrates how apparent nonverbal communication is to others, as well as how
easy it is for other individuals to read. The first experiment consisted of Forty college students
took part in the study(pg.16). These students were shown footage of televised basketball
games from the NBA and the highest German league (Seasons 2010-2012) and table tennis
matches from the World Cup, the European Cup, the Chinese Super League, and the Highest
German League (pg.16). The results of the study found there was a significant main effect of
actual score on the score estimates indicating that perceivers were very accurate at estimating

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whether both basketball and table tennis players were leading or trailing(Pg. 18). They found
that the test subjects were easily able to pick out the leading or trailing teams on a consistent
basis.
To take their research even further, they split the experiment into different age groups in
order to determine if the ability to effectively read a persons body language develops as a
human matures. Forty-four children (23 male and 21 female) took part in the study (pg.20).
While still effective in identifying a leading or trailing team, they found that adults were more
still effective at evaluating the body language of the athletes that they watched, which shouldnt
come as a surprise (Pg. 22).1 These findings are interpreted as developmental adaptations to the
increasing demands of the social environment as humans grow older. Therefore, adults show a
more sensitive fine-tuning regarding both differentiation and reliably judging the intensity of
different emotions (pg. 19).
This statement can perfectly explain the nature of the study. In order to ensure that the ratings
were not influenced by score-induced changes in sport specific behavior such as strategy or
tactics, we chose video stimuli that involved breaks during the gameincluding time-outs, free
throws in basketball, and breaks between points in table tennis. Further, we carefully avoided
showing any kind of obvious non- verbal signals associated with pride such as raising both fists
above the head or obvious signals displaying shame such as hiding the face behind the hands
(pg. 16).
By the end of the study the researchers could conclude that humans can infer who is
winning based simply off of nonverbal communication. The essays states that the researchers
1 I paraphrased this, it was over a large amount of text.

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want to How do leading athletes react to the expression of submission by their losing
opponent?(pg.27).
Having played team sports throughout my life, the findings in this study do not come as a
surprise to me. The teams that I played for that showed enthusiasm and excitement on the field
generally performed at a higher level, though still this is clearly not always the case. Sports
teams that show high energy, upbeat tempo, and appear to be fired-up tend to perform better
and more efficiently than teams that show less intensity. For example, during Super Bowl
XLVIII, by simply glancing at the game one could make the evaluation that Seattle had full
control of the game throughout the contest. They appeared to be assertive and aggressive with
the ball, while the Denver Broncos seemed to walk everywhere and simply did not playing with
as much heart. In fact, one could go as far to say that somebody who has no prior knowledge of
football could have evaluated the game in a similar context simply due to the body language of
both teams.
The aim of the present study was to investigate whether people are able to detect who is
leading or trailing in an ongoing sport competition based solely on nonverbal cues(pg.25). Our
findings are in line with evolutionary accounts of nonverbal behavior and suggest that humans
display nonverbal signals as a consequence of leading or trailing which are reliably interpreted
by others (pg.13). Nonverbal communication often gives others more feedback than we are
voluntarily willing to give them.

P. Furley, G. Schwiezer (2013). The expression of victory and loss: Estimating whos leading or
trailing from nonverbal cues in sports. Journal Of Nonverbal Behavior, 2014(38), 13-29.

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