The Expression of Success: Are Thin-Slices of Pre-performance Nonverbal Behavior Prior to Throwing Darts Predictive of P
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The Expression of Success: Are Thin-Slices of Pre-performance Nonverbal Behavior Prior to Throwing Darts Predictive of Performance in Professional Darts? Philip Furley1 · Daniel Memmert1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The present research attempted to test how skilled people are at predicting perceptual-motor performance of professional darts players based on short observations of pre-performance nonverbal behavior. In four thin-slices experiments (total N = 490) we randomly sampled stimulus material from the 2017 World Championships of Darts showing short video recordings of the players immediately before throwing darts. Participants were asked to estimate the points scored for the respective throws. Results across four experiments, all of which were successfully replicated in direct replication attempts, supported the hypothesis that pre-performance nonverbal behavior of professional darts players gives valid information to observers about subsequent performance tendencies. The present research is the first to show that highly skilled individuals seem to display nonverbal cues that observers can pick up to draw inferences about how these individuals are likely to perform. Keywords Person perception · Social cognition · Nonverbal behavior/communication · Facial expressions · Body language · Perceptual-motor performance · Sports People are constantly trying to predict how other people are likely to behave. An important source of information in this respect is the momentary nonverbal behavior (e.g., body language, facial expression, etc.) of the target person. Over 60 years of research on interpersonal accuracy or interpersonal sensitivity has conclusively shown that people in general (despite important individual differences in this skill) are accurate at assessing other peoples’ emotions, personality, intentions, motives, and thoughts (Hall et al. 2016; Schmid Mast and Hall 2018). These assessments are important for predicting how another person is likely to behave in the future and give guidance for successfully managing social
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1091 9-020-00342-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Philip Furley p.furley@dshs‑koeln.de 1
Institute of Training and Computer Science in Sports, German Sport University, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933 Cologne, Germany
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
interactions. However, limited research has directly tested if people can make accurate immediate behavioral predictions from short observations of nonverbal behavior. Typically, interpersonal sensitivity is measured with performance tests in which participants see and/or hear other people’s behavior (usually in short videos or photographs) and are asked to infer something about the target person. This inference is subsequently compared to a criterion variable. The paradigm that is usually used to determine interpersonal sensitivity at the group level (i.e., people, i
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