Sandy Wolfson

The effects of sound and colour on responses to a computer game

Background colour (red/blue) and sound (loud/quiet) were manipulated in a series of computer games. Players using a blue screen improved gradually over the session, while red screen players peaked midway and then deteriorated. A similar pattern for heart rate was found, suggesting that arousal was implicated in the effect. Sound alone had little impact, but the red/loud combination was associated with perceptions of excitement and playing well. The results suggest that the aura of a computer game may affect cognitive and physiological responses.

A survey of substance use at a UK university: Prevalence of use and views of students

There has been a long-held belief that the substance use of those who become regular users of illicit drugs marks them out as a distinctive group. However, recent evidence suggests that young people who use drugs are little different from their non-using peers. The rising trends in drug-taking among young people may have accelerated the process of normalization which began in the 1960s. This survey, carried out on a sample of 348 UK students, used a questionnaire to examine the relationships between their substance use and a range of perceptions about causes and ratings of the self. It was found that recent drug use was mainly confined to cannabis, amphetamines, Ecstasy and hallucinogens. Almost one-quarter of the participants were regular users of cannabis and/or amphetamines, the two most popular illict drugs. Subjective ratings on a range of statements about the causes of drug use and personal beliefs provided little evidence to suggest that regular users were different from the normal population of st...

The extent and causes of home advantage: Some recent insights

Success in sport is big business. Identifying factors that are likely to consistently influence sporting success, albeit by only a small margin, continues to interest coaches, players and academics alike. Apart from the quality of the opposition, probably the most consistent factor likely to influence sporting success is game location. It is not surprising, then, that researchers are attracted to studying the extent and causes of the home advantage. This special issue of the Journal of Sports Sciences provides a range of recent, and sometimes contradictory, views of the world’s leading authors on the home advantage phenomenon. Pollard and Pollard provide a thorough and compelling account of home advantage in team sports since the creation of national leagues in both English football and major American team sports. General decline in home advantage over time, and clear differences between some sports (notably, lower home advantage in baseball), provide avenues for future research to explain such trends and differences. The authors themselves suggest familiarity and travel as key factors in home advantage, and suggest that there is little support for crowd noise as a cause. This contrasts with two papers that highlight the importance of crowd noise in enhancing home advantage (e.g. Clarke in Australian rules football and Balmer, Nevill and Lane in boxing). In addition, two papers look at perceptions as to the causes of home advantage among fans and the media. Smith notes that both fans and the media see crowd noise as the most important reason for the superior performance of teams at home. Wolfson, Wakelin and Lewis show that fans appear to take credit for their teams’ successes at home but deny any impact on home defeats. A number of papers, and particularly those by Clarke and Koning (discussed later), make improvements to the accuracy of home advantage modelling. Clarke models home advantage in Australian rules football, highlighting that allowing for differences in home advantage between teams makes significant improvements to the description of home advantage (as suggested previously by Clarke & Norman, 1995). He also identifies an ‘‘isolation effect’’, with higher home advantage for non-Victorian teams, and proposes both familiarity and crowd effects as likely factors in causing home advantage. Jones, Bray and Olivier examine the possibility of a more direct performance mechanism underlying the home advantage. Their data suggest that away teams are more aggressive in games they lose rather than win. However, no overall differences between players’ aggression at home or away are noted. Carron’s timely updating of Courneya and Carron’s influential 1992 review addresses a range of potential factors contributing to the home advantage. We welcome this opportunity for Carron and coworkers to update their conceptual framework, although their decision to remove the effect of ‘‘officials’’ in Figure 2 is at odds with the compelling evidence provided elsewhere in this issue that subjective decisions of judges and referees can consistently influence home advantage. While historically the majority of home advantage research has focused on team sports, two papers investigate home advantage specifically in individual sports. Balmer, Nevill and Lane used European championship boxing to demonstrate a large increase in home advantage where officials judged outcome (i.e. points decisions versus knockouts), supporting the hypothesis that home advantage is often greatest where input from officials is greatest. Interestingly, Koning also found some evidence of home advantage in speed skating (an individual sport where officials have far less input) using a random-effects model to address the issue of ability of skaters. Controlling for differing abilities between teams or competitors to more accurately model home advantage has been a recurring theme in home advantage research, and is also addressed in some of the other papers (e.g. see Clarke; Balmer, Nevill and Lane). Evidently, while home advantage may be particularly prominent in subjectively judged individual sports, it is not altogether absent in objectively judged events. Investigation of mechanisms underlying this small yet significant home advantage in the absence of a large input from officials could prove a fruitful avenue for future research. While Balmer, Nevill and Lane discuss crowd factors predominantly as acting upon sports officials, Journal of Sports Sciences, April 2005; 23(4): 335 – 336

Testosterone and cortisol responses in male soccer players: The effect of home and away venues

The present studies examined the influence of playing venue on psychobiological responses in male soccer players. Many studies have demonstrated the existence of a home advantage, wherein teams perform better at home than away. A recent focus has attempted to explain this advantage from a psychobiological perspective, with studies showing hormonal differences with regard to venue, game outcome, dominance and perceived stress. Two studies investigated testosterone and cortisol responses in relation to home and away venues. In an initial study of 18 male elite Premier League academy soccer players (age, 17.47, SD, 64), salivary cortisol levels were monitored in two competitive matches, both at home and away. Higher post-game cortisol levels were observed at home (p=0.002), with the team winning all its games. In a second study involving a 12 semi-professional group of players (age, 23.17, SD, 3.8), the same post-game cortisol findings at home were replicated (p=0.001), with this team losing all its games. No effects were observed for testosterone in either study. The results extend earlier research findings on the complex relationship which surrounds the psychobiological impact on the home advantage. The findings suggest that higher levels of stress are experienced by home players in their home matches.

Attitudes towards soccer coaches' use of punishment in Japan and England: a cross-cultural study.

Punishment serves a wide variety of functions, including retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and behavioural shaping to comply with cultural norms. These uses, and the appropriateness of various forms of punishment, have been widely debated from practical, legal and ethical standpoints. Research demonstrates cross-cultural differences in the prevalence of types of punishment and societal attitudes towards punitive behaviour; these are known to exist in home, educational, work and sports environments. The present study used a 2 × 2 × 2 design in which Japanese and English football (soccer) players and coaches read a vignette describing a coach who used either physical or verbal punishment in response to a troublesome player. Participants then rated the coach on items measuring acceptance of the coachs behaviour and perceptions of his popularity. The results showed that the English and Japanese coaches and players viewed the coach similarly when he used verbal punishment. However, statistical interactions revealed that the English groups saw the coach as significantly more popular and acceptable when he used verbal rather than physical punishment, whereas the Japanese participants did not distinguish between the two forms of punishment. The Japanese group also scored higher on scales measuring Sensitivity to Punishment (SP) and Attitudes towards Punishment. The results are interpreted in terms of cross-cultural differences in these characteristics as well as to related variations in concepts of individualism versus collectivism, shame and guilt, and attitudes towards leadership.