In fire hook , reading the facial expressions of others can be lively to sussing out a four flush . A similar situation may play out in baseball game , according to a new study inFrontiers in Psychology .
In baseball game , the pitcher and the hitter are basically engaged in a duel , making the sport a great fashion to examine how interpersonal moral force affect the biz . In this survey , Amsterdam - based psychologist tested how bookman participants reacted to footage of Major League Baseball players pitching in the World Series to see if facial expression influence how people analyze the throw .
After found in pre - tests that scholar could harvest specific emotion from the television , a group of 34 participant watched the time of World Series pitchers just before they hurl the ball and predicted how accurate the pitch would be . They ranked the likelihood of whether the pitch would be fast or slow , difficult or gentle , and whether the batter would swing or not .
The student predicted that pitchers with angry aspect would bemuse faster , more difficult pitching , while happy pitchers would switch more accurately . Unsurprisingly , worried - looking pitchers were perceive as not accurate in their throws .
The Dutch students had very little experience with baseball game , so the experiment probably does n’t on the dot match up to how a real game would blossom out . However , the research worker did equate their science laboratory data with the existent - life outcomes of the pitch shown in the picture , including how fast the delivery was , whether the batter swung , and whether they got a smasher . In reality , the mound ’s emotional expression was unrelated to the speed of his throw or how accurate they were ( if it was a " glob ” ) , but facial expression did affect whether or not the batter swung . When the pitchers depend happy , the batters were more likely to take a vacillation at the ball .
The results were only marginally significant , so this is far from a hard - and - fast rule . But it does suggest that emotional analysis and facial expressions do play at least a minor role in baseball . And that pitcherful should smile if they know they ’re going to confuse a bad pitch .
