If star Spanish striker David Villa hopes to lift La Furia Roja to its first-ever World Cup title, he might want to be extra careful with how the referee sees him on Sunday.
According to a study published yesterday, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that soccer referees tend to call more fouls when the action is (according to their perspective) moving to the left rather than the right. Using players from Penn's men's and women's varsity soccer teams, the 12 participants (all native English-speakers) were shown 134 photos of potential fouls in both their original form and a "flipped" version, merely reversing the initial image. Researchers discovered that not only was reaction time for judging said fouls faster (and hence more decisive) for the left-moving plays, but that participants called, on average, a higher number of fouls on plays moving to the left.
One explanation for the discrepancy could be an innate bias in people who interpret language in a left-to-right manner (like English), whereas they might be more likely to negatively judge a play moving in the opposite direction (right to left). "If the spatial biases we observed in this population of soccer players have similar effects on referees in real matches," said Alexander Kranjec, the study's lead author, "they may influence particular officials differently."
FIFA has not declared who the referee for Sunday's championship match will be, although England's Howard Webb appears to be one of the front-runners. If that happens, you can bet both Spain and the Netherlands will do their best on Webb's good side—literally.
Photo: University of Pennsylvania
