The Influence of Crowd Noise upon Judging Decisions in Muay Thai

Abstract

Background: Home advantage has been demonstrated across a number of sports, yet questions still remain over the causes of the phenomenon. Crowd effects on sport officials have been one mechanism proposed in the literature. This study attempted to investigate the impact of crowd noise on home advantage by examining the influence of crowd noise on the judgement decisions of Muay Thai officials. Method: Using a repeated measures design, 10 experienced Muay Thai judges observed a video of a Muay Thai contest in two different conditions: one with and one without crowd noise. Judges recorded the number of strikes each competitor made using mechanical counters with a comparison made between conditions. Results: Judges awarded 1.23 more strikes on average in the presence of crowd noise when compared to the no crowd noise condition. Crowd noise influenced some judges greatly but other far less. The results from a within subject ANOVA analysis suggested the differences between noise conditions were statistically significant (F(1,39) = 4.513, P = . 04, η2 = . 104) as was the home advantage effect (F(1,39) = 4.087, P = .05, η2 = . 095). Conclusion: Crowd noise increased the scores of Muay Thai judges resulting in an advantage to the home competitor. Possible reasons for the findings include informational conformity, the use of a noise heuristic, cue learning or perceptual errors. Avenues for future research are offered.

Share and Cite:

Myers, T. , Nevill, A. & Al-Nakeeb, Y. (2012). The Influence of Crowd Noise upon Judging Decisions in Muay Thai. Advances in Physical Education, 2, 148-152. doi: 10.4236/ape.2012.24026.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] Balmer, N. J., Nevill, A. M., & Lane, A. M. (2005). Do judges enhance home advantage in European championship boxing. Journal of Sports Sciences, 23, 409-416. doi:10.1080%2F02640410400021583
[2] Balmer, N. J., Nevill, A. M., Lane, A. M., Ward, P. A., Williams, M., & Fairclough, S. H. (2007). Influence of crowd noise on soccer refereeing consistency in soccer. Journal of Sport Behavior, 30, 130-148
[3] Boen F, Auweele Y. V., Claesa, E., Feysb, J., & De Cuyp, B. (2006). The impact of open feedback on conformity among judges in rope skippin g. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 7, 77-590. doi:10.1016%2Fj.psychsport.2005.12.001
[4] Boen, F., van Hoye, K., Auweele, Y. V., Feys, J., & Smits, T. (2008). Open feedback in gymnastic judging causes conformity bias based on informational influencing. Journal of sport Sciences, 26, 621-628.Doi:10.1080%2F02640410701670393
[5] Boyko, R. H., Boyko, A. R., & Boyko, M. G. (2007). Referee bias contributes to home advantage in English Premiership football. Journal of Sports Sciences, 25, 1185-1194. doi:10.1080%2F02640410601038576
[6] Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591-621. doi:10.1146%2Fannurev.psych.55.090902.142015
[7] Deutsch, M. & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 51, 629-636. doi:10.1037%2Fh0046408
[8] Erdfelder, E., Faul, F., & Buchner, A. (1996). G-power: A general power analysis program. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 1-11. doi:10.3758%2FBF03203630
[9] Forgas, J. P. (1995). Mood and judgement: The affect infusion model (AIM). Psychological Bulletin, 117, 39-66.
[10] Guttmann, A. (1986). Sports spectators. New York: Columbia University Press.
[11] Isen, A. M. (2000). Positive affect and decision making. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 417-435). New York: Guilford Press.
[12] Lane, A. M., Nevill, A. M., Ahmad, N. S., & Balmer, N. (2006). Soccer referee decision-making: “Shall I blow the whistle?” Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 5, 243-253.
[13] Myers, T. D. (2007). Cultural differences in judging Muay Thai. Annual Conference of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Abstracts. Journal of Sports Sciences, 25, 235-369.
[14] Myers, T. D., & Nevill, A. M. (2008). The effects of different judging styles on technique selection of elite Thai and UK Muay Thai competitors. Poster presentation at the BASES annual conference, London: Brunel University.
[15] Nevill, A., Balmer, N., & Williams, M. (2002). The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 3, 261-272. doi:10.1016%2FS1469-0292%2801%2900033-4
[16] Nevill, A., & Holder, R. (1999). Home advantage in sport: An overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home. Sports Medicine, 28, 221-236.
[17] Nevill, A., Newell, & Gale, S. (1996). Factors associated with home advantage in English and Scottish soccer matches. Journal of Sports Sciences, 14, 181-186. doi:10.1080%2F02640419608727700
[18] Pettersson-Lidbom, P. & Priks, M. (2007). Behavior under social pressure: Empty Italian stadiums and referee bias. Economics Letters,108, 212-214. doi:10.1016%2Fj.econlet.2010.04.023
[19] Pool, G. J., & Schwegler, A. F. (2007). Differentiating among motives for norm conformity. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29, 47- 60. doi:10.1080%2F01973530701330983
[20] Scheer, J., Ansorge, C. J., & Howard, J. (1983). Judging Bias induced by viewing contrived video tapes: A function of selected psychological variables. Journal of Sport Psychology, 5, 427-437.
[21] Shah, A. K., Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). Heuristics made easy: An effort-reduction framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 207-222.
[22] doi:10.1037%2F0033-2909.134.2.207
[23] Simon, H. A. (1990). Invariants of human behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 1-19. doi:10.1146%2Fannurev.psych.41.1.1
[24] Stangor, C. (2004). Social groups in action and interaction. New York: Psychology Press.
[25] Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000). Advancing the rationality debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 701-772. doi:10.1017%2FS0140525X00623439
[26] Sutter, M., & Kocher, M. (2004), Favoritism of agents—The case of referees’ home bias. Journal of Economic Psychology, 25, 461-469.
[27] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
[28] Unkelbach, C., & Memmert, D., (2010). Crowd noise as a cue in referee decisions contributes to the home advantage. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 32, 483-498.
[29] Vanden Auweele, Y., Boen, F., De Geest, A., & Feys, J. (2004). Judging bias in synchronized swimming: Open feedback leads to nonperformance-based conformity. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 26, 561-557.
[30] Wolfson, S., Wakelin, D., & Lewis, M. (2005). Football supporters’ perceptions of their role in the home advantage. Journal of Sports Sciences, 23, 365-374. doi:10.1080%2F02640410400021567

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.