312112 - The Problem of Correct Self-Judgement in Gymnastics

Henning Plessner & Rebecca Smith

In a series of three consecutive studies, female self-judgement and inferred self-judgement in gymnastics was analysed. A total of 125 female youth gymnasts performed a beam routine of their choice which was rated by themselves, expert judges and, in the last study, their coaches. In accordance with previous findings in the field of women’s self-judgement, all studies showed that girls underrated their own sporting performance. Their own score was significantly lower than the experts’ score. When rating other gymnasts, they showed equal scores to the expert judges. Their ratings did not change after receiving visual feedback of their own routine. Coaches were also shown to significantly underrate the absolute level of their own gymnasts, despite a correlation between coaches and experts’ scores. Coaches inferred self-judgements showed no correlation to the athletes’ actual self-judgements.
In total, these studies show different biases and errors in self-judgement and inferred self-judgement in gymnastics. This highlights that further research and targeted interventions in this field are needed.