By Tony Attwood
A recent research paper highlighted by the British Psychological Society reports on a thing known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect (which shows that most people with particularly limited knowledge of a subject are likely vastly to overestimate their ability to make the right decisions in relation to the subject they know little about)} I’ve been thinking about this in relation to football.
To psychologists, this phenomenon of drawing conclusions from limited information is well-known and widespread but this fact seems to be persistently ignored by football journalists, who often have very limited knowledge of what is going on in clubs on whom they report.
To see how this dangerous situation works, in a series of experiments people were either given both sides of an argument, while others were only given one side. Each group then had to indicate if they understood the situation and if they had enough information to make a decision, They were also asked if they felt most others would reach the same conclusion.
Following this half the participants then got some more information which they didn’t have before and they had the chance to change their report if they wished to.
What they found was that most people felt they had enough information to make a decision, and most stayed with the decision they had made even after they were given new information which contradicted their original finding.
In short, no matter how much more information they got later, and what that information said, they stayed with their original conclusions.
Now consider this in the case of young players in League clubs being overplayed even when they have an injury which means they ought not to play at all. Most people believe (because the media says so) that the clubs look after their youngsters, and so conclude the club is not to blame – even when the player has a career ending injury.
Indeed the chances are that when given evidence to show the club has played a youngster when he should have been rested, most people will still believe the club behaved honourably and properly.
So in fact even when people realise they don’t know everything, (such as how clubs treat young players) they tend to think they know enough and assume that they clubs are behaving properly because the clubs say so, and journalists don’t contradict this.
Recognising this football authorities persistently refuse to investigate everything from allegations concerning clubs playing youngsters who are injured to allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct in football. Hence the massive scandals we sometimes see.
Assuming that we don’t know everything and staying curious about gaps in our knowledge may result in a more informed understanding of what is actually going on in football clubs – especially as reports of the mistreatment of youngsters by clubs are out there, even though not reported by the media.
Indeed if you are in Britain you will surely be aware of scandals involving the sub-postmasters who were accused of stealing millions of pounds (which they didn’t), Grenfell Tower, Windrush, and of course as the report itself mentions bereaved campaigners forced to “fight to end cover-ups over the Hillsborough football stadium disaster.” We have a great ability to hide horror stories under the carpet, it seems.
For in all these cases information was withheld, and everyone assumed that they had all the information to hand – until more started coming out.
The various cases we now see where there are serious allegations of clubs playing young players who should not be played because of injury are not being fully prosecuted both because the FA absolutely won’t touch them, and because people are used to assuming everything is ok.
Indeed there is no logic that can allow us to assume that everything is fine and nothing is being covered up in football, given what we know about the inner workings of football and the way much that we don’t know about PGMO, Uefa, The FA, Fifa etc is not known because of the absence of debate about their approaches in the media.
The FA admit they don’t investigate clubs because they undoubtedly know (and they are clubs benefit from) what is called in psychology the Dunning-Kruger Effect which shows that most people with particularly limited knowledge of a subject are likely to vastly overestimate how much knowledge they have.
Most of us don’t know what is going on in clubs and in the FA but we like to assume that we do know, and because the media never admit they don’t know we take it that everything is fine. As a result, when parents are concerned about the treatment of their child by a club they struggle because they don’t have access to the sort of data the clubs have, the FA won’t help and football in general knows the media is on the clubs’ side (as any journalists who step out of line lose their press pass to games).
Of course, this problem isn’t just a football problem, but it exists within football and no one wants to take it on. We have very little information about the clubs and the way they treat children, just as we do about PGMO and how it appoints referees for different matches. We should have more, but the FA won’t touch the issue.
Indeed a lack of information is only the start of the problem. We need open information and a media willing to start from the premise that “there may be something now quite right here”, rather than a media, as we have at present, which takes club press releases as all they need to consider when writing an article.
