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When in doubt… do something, or do nothing?
When we’re not sure, our biases guide our choices… but which ones?
Imagine you’re the goal keeper of a great football team in a championship final. The game is nearly over and your side is winning 2–1, but an unfortunate foul by one of your team mates in final minute of injury time means you’re facing a penalty kick. Stop it, and you will be the hero of the match, let it in, and thanks to you it’s extra time, and possibly defeat. What is your plan — dive left, dive right… or stay put?
Penalty kicks take place at the boundary of human reaction time. The player needs to decide where to place the ball before the goalkeeper moves, and the keeper needs to choose what to do before the ball is actually kicked. If you did like most goalkeepers do, you’d go for one of the two sides. Unfortunately about 1/3 of penalty kicks are placed in the centre of the goal, as a study by Michael Bar Eli, a psychologist at Ben Gurion University, and colleagues found. They analysed 286 penalty kicks from top league and championships by watching footage of the matches (research can be really hard!), and worked out that 29% of them were kicked in the centre, 32% to the left, and 39% to the right. However, the goalie jumped left 49% of the time, right 45% of the time, and stayed in the centre just 6% of the time.
