Studio studied the traits of the personality and the cognitive skills of Serie A athletes of the Brazilian championship and the main category of Sweden
On November 24, 2022, one Thursday, the Brazilians saw the premiere of selection against Serbia, in World Cup from Qatar. More than two years later, perhaps few remember the game, which ended with Vitória from Brazil 2-0, but the goal of the attacker’s volume Richarlison It remains in the memory of sports lovers. With his left foot, he damaged the ball launched by Trivella from Vinicius junior And, in a choreographic jump, he hit his right foot a certain football among the opponent’s beams. Elected the most beautiful goal of the competition for the popular vote of International Football Federation (FIFA)The moment illustrates the athlete’s profile on a social network.
So he played, who also delight those who do not follow sport, not only depend on luck or extraordinary physical ability. In addition to a profound technical understanding of the game, the athletes who perform them have an information processing capacity and decision under pressure higher than people of the same age and level of education, suggests a study published in January in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNA).
In the study, an international group of researchers, in which the Brazilian Alberto Filgueiras, of the University of Queensland Central, Australia, studied the traits of the personality and cognitive skills of 153 team players in Team a Brazilian championship And 51 players in the main category of the Sweden championship: athletes aged between 17 and 35 years. According to the authors, this is, so far, the work that has done the most extensive psychological and cognitive evaluation of the greatest number of elite players. Previous studies included few athletes at the top of their career and only part of the tests.
In the study published in PNA, each player has undergone three batteries of neuropsychological tests. One of them defined the parties of the personality of the participant, while the other two, one of whom was developed by Filgueiras and collaborators e Published in 2023 in the magazine BMC PsychologyThey measured their cognitive skills: characteristics such as creativity, mental flexibility and short -term memory, as well as the ability to maintain attention, plan and solve problems and inhibit inappropriate responses.
In all cognitive tests, the players obtained an average score higher than the reference value for the population of the same age group or that of the members of the control group, consisting of 124 Brazilians of the same age and level of education that did not play football.
The superiority of the players in these cognitive characteristics, important for the rapid reaction, the change of strategy or the creation of offers in the warmth of the game, added the traits of the personality that also promote self -confidence and teamwork. The athletes have presented higher levels of extroversion, opening for new experiences and consciences (stroke linked to ambition, cars -discipline, focus on objectives and cars -contollo) compared to participants in the control group. These, in turn, dotted stronger than athletes in characteristics such as condescension and neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anxietyAnger, frustration and guilt.
According to the researchers, these results indicate that elite players tend to be more sociable, disciplined and adaptable than the members of the control group used in the comparison. The non -Hleti, on the other hand, show greater emotional instability and a greater propensity to follow the social norms without doubt than the players.
In the next step of the study, the authors used the characteristics of the personality and the cognitive performance of all participants to teach two programs artificial intelligence To distinguish elite players from non -athletes. They also used one of these programs to identify which traits of cognitive personality and skills have contributed most to recognizing who a first -rate footballer was. So, based exclusively on personality and information on cognitive tests, they asked the program to underline what the elite athletes would be: the algorithm hit the classification of 97% of the time.
As a last phase of the research, to see if these characteristics have made it possible to predict the performances of the players on the field, the researchers have faced the psychological profile and cognitive skills of the Brazilian athletes with their performance (goal, goal, pass and dripping) in the 2021 season of the Brazilian championship, from coming South American cup and from Libertadores of America – The Swedes were excluded from this step due to the lack of data. The players who have scored the most about the balance of consciousness and the opening to new experiences have scored more goals, while those with the best memory made more dribbling successfully.
“Our results show that cognitive skills such as planning and mental flexibility are directly linked to performance in football, influencing metrics such as objectives, dribbling and assist”, the Italian psychologist and the neuroscientist research Leonardo Bonetti, professor at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark and a researcher at the University of Oxford, the first author of the Pnas study. Graduated in classical guitar and psychology and doctorate in neuroscience, Bonetti studies the brain mechanisms of memory and cognitive abilities.
“Our article aims to identify a cognitive and personality profile typical of elite athletes,” explains Filgueiras, co -author of the study. “Until then, we knew that elite athletes had physical skills and technical-tactical knowledge better than the rest of the population, but we came across the donkey athlete’s shop, which has only physical skills,” he says. Now, researchers have shown that their mental dimensions, in particular the personality and executive functions, are different from those of the general population. “It would be a sort of sporting intelligence, problem and make effective decisions within the football field”.
A discovery that attracted the attention of the researchers was the low condescension of elite athletes, that is, a tendency to question direct orders. “This makes us reflect on the role of the coaches, who often give many instructions and commands. It is interesting to note that these athletes do not obey automatically. They demonstrate and must be convinced that the orientation makes sense before following them,” says Filgueiras. “This is not impulsive, but the autonomy and trust in its decisions. If a coach says” foul “, the answer is probably:” Why? The other way seems better “”, adds the Brazilian psychologist.
This stretch, according to researchers, can be connected to what is popularly known as “game intelligence”, an ability that involves not only the perception of the environment, but also the adaptation to sudden changes, maintaining stable performance. Ricardo Picoli, psychologist of Exports Club Bahia and coordinator of the specialization in operation and sports psychology of Federal University of São Carlos (Ufscar)He says that this ability is particularly relevant in practical situations, such as changes in the tactical scheme or the variations of the scenario during the game. “Players with this more developed ability can better evaluate long -term career opportunities, avoiding choices that may seem attractive immediately but harmful in the future,” adds Picoli, who has not participated in the study.
The authors of the work of the PNA argue that the results could be used by clubs and technical committees to improve training methods by incorporating cognitive and psychological tests into the evaluation and development of the players. “The analysis of these skills allows you to adopt a more accurate approach to the selection of athletes, the definition of functions within the team and to the improvement of training strategies,” says Bonetti. “Success in soccer It does not depend only on physical attributes, but also on psychological traits and cognitive skills, which play an essential role in the performance of high -level players. “
The use of psychological evaluations to try to understand and improve athletes’ services is not recent. In recent decades, sports psychology has tried to map as psychological factors influence players’ performance and can be applied to optimize training, explains the sports psychologist Kátia Rubio, a associate professor Senior at the School of Physical Education and Sport University of San Paolo (EEFE-USP) and coordinator of the Olympic Studio Group (Geo-USP), in another old work, published in 2007 on the Brazilian Journal of Psychology of sport.
In high performance sport, the identification of these factors was performed through psychodiagnosis, which evaluates the characteristics of the athlete’s personality and the emotional state in training and competitions in order to find intervention strategies that relieve the symptoms of suffering and improve emotional well -being. “With the result of the diagnosis you can reach conclusions on the personal or group peculiarities that offer subsidies for the selection of new athletes to a team, to change the training, identify the technical-tactical preparation, choose the strategy and conduct tactics in a competition and optimize the psychic states”, writes the researcher in the 2007 article.
In an interview with Fapesp Research, Rubio, who did not participate in the study led by Bonetti, says that the search for psychological profiles in sport began between the 60s and 70s, when psychology tried to establish itself as science through psychometry. “In the context of Cold WarSport has been seen as a way to demonstrate power and there was a great interest in making it more predictable, including the attempt to identify the profiles of elite athletes “, recalls the researcher”. However, more than five decades later, there is no definitive model that can, categorically, which will be a sample. Sports performance is multifactorial, influenced by psychological, environmental and social aspects “.
This, by the way, is a gap that the authors of the work of the PNAs intend to fill, expanding the research in the basic categories of sport. Under the coordination of Filgueiras, they plan to study how cognitive characteristics develop and if it is possible to predict which players are more likely to achieve the elite level. “We also try to explore the relationship between cognitive skills, field positions and balance of the team, since a team does not need players with a single type of cognitive profile to be successful,” says Bonetti.
This report was originally published in the Research Fapesp magazine. Read the original Here.
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
