Getting a bit on the side - penalty kick direction is influenced implicitly by the position of the goalkeeper

Abstract

Performance can be influenced by stimuli that do not breach the surface of conscious awareness and can not be described with words. Evidence of this phenomenon has been produced in tasks varying from line length discrimination (McCourt & Olafson, 1997) to motor learning (Masters, Eves & Maxwell, 2007). We will present data from both observational and experimental studies that suggest a goalkeeper can, by standing marginally left or right of goal center, bias a penalty taker implicitly (unconsciously) to kick to the side with more space. The goalkeeper can then dive strategically to that side to make the save. Our data are compatible with Weber’s law in that the smallest difference at which penalty-takers showed reliably above-chance discrimination of the side with most space was constant, regardless of the scaling of the stimuli. Extrapolation of our data indicates that the optimum displacement of the goalkeeper in real life is somewhere between 6 and 10 cm. With a displacement in this range, the penalty taker will be only implicitly aware that there is more space on one side of the goalkeeper, but will be 10% more likely to direct the penalty to that side.