What got me thinking about this was something I witnessed a while back at a high school basketball game. One of the star players on the winning team had a good game, but it wasn’t up to his father’s expectations. As a result, the boy’s father told him that he was so embarrassed by his performance that he didn’t even want to ride home in the same car.
It reminded me of the time I was heading to the parking lot after a round of a junior chess tournament and witnessed a mother stooped down in her small daughter’s sobbing face and berating her for not playing the opening like she had been shown and losing.
Or the time a coworker told me he had talked to his daughter’s high school principal because his daughter’s volleyball coach hadn’t taken his advice and as a result a game was lost. The same guy told me of an incident on a cruise ship where in a swimming pool volleyball game between the crew and passengers one of the passengers was so bad, “I told him to get the (expletive deleted) out of the pool!”
Why is it that people who are on the hot seat making instantaneous decisions receive so much criticism when their decisions don't turn out well?
It’s called hindsight bias and it occurs all the time and it’s not limited to the world of sports. Whether it is sports fans saying the coach should have done something differently or when after a tragedy people start explaining how those involved should have acted differently, we all fall prey to hindsight bias.
People can be quick to make judgments about the decisions of others when, in fact, in many cases, it is difficult or impossible to know what decision is the correct one.
In sports statistics are often used to make decisions and it’s easy to commit the hindsight bias error in evaluating the result of a decision because you already know what the result was. People are fallible in their decision making and nobody has all their decisions turn out the way they intended even if they are based on sound statistics.
When you go to a sporting event, whether it is a professional team or a kid’s recreational game, there are always people being critical. We live in a society of critics. It has almost become common place that we criticize even the things we supposedly enjoy the most.
Often at a sporting event the same fans who paint their face and dress in silly costumes are also demeaning, negative and just plain nasty toward their own team, players and coaches. Sometimes they seem so miserable that you wonder if they are even enjoying the game at all.
We have become critical in our culture. We expect perfection, yet we have very little appreciation for what it takes to perform the skill or action needed. Even if one is not a football fan, it’s a source of amazement how a quarterback can throw a ball to a player on the move 40 or 50 yards downfield and it lands in his hands. Or, at the instant a baseball is hit how does an outfielder know the precise spot where it’s going to come down so he can be standing there to catch it? Let them misjudge just once and fans will be screaming and yelling at them.
Those are professional players, but the same expectations make their way down into youth sports in the form of fanatical parents who are screaming at their kids to perform better because the parents are expecting perfection and anything less means the kid wasn’t trying hard enough.
Criticism is not restricted to sports. Everybody has their opinions, but many seem to lack the ability to separate their own identity from outside events. Disappointment in the outcome leaves people angry. Sport fanatics riot when their team loses. Or, when a President that a lot of people don't like gets elected instead of trying to work with him, some leaders spend four years neglecting the country’s business, stirring up hate and dedicating themselves to staging a coup to overthrow a duly elected President. In fact, their hatred is so strong that when a member of their own party stated that for the good of the country he would try to work with the man, he was vilified and told if he wanted to do something good for the country he should resign from office.
Or, a few years ago in gymnastics the sensational teen Gabby Douglas ran into a lot of harsh criticism because some idiotic people didn't like the way she wore her hair!
When it comes to sports, why do people place so much emphasis on things over which they have no control to the point that they let those things dictate how they act and respond? Why do people become so emotionally upset over an outcome or result, that it affects their relationships with others?
Non-constructive criticism never results in anything positive. Now, get this. In 2010 and 2011, two studies were published that revealed a significant increase in domestic violence following sporting events...up to 30 percent.
The answer lies in the motivation behind being a fan. Often, especially in the case of parents, they were athletes. or chess players, or whatever, that were unable to reach their goals and are living vicariously though their children. Because of this, their criticism is the result of disappointment, anger or they may even be jealous of their own children.
While watching their children some parents become critical perhaps because they were unable to participate in such events when they were a child, but feel their lives would have somehow turned out differently had they had the opportunity.
Others feel that their child’s performance is tied to their identity as parents, so when the child performs poorly, the parent looks bad.
Still others seem to want their child to succeed because the child is seen as a meal ticket. If the child can make a living at the sport, they can share the wealth with their parents.
For others, their identity as a person is tied to their team and when the team looks bad, the fans look bad.
End of rant...
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