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A UCLA examine finds that decrease NFL jersey numbers are usually related to the concept that a participant’s physique is slimmer and sooner. (Story aired on All Issues Thought of on Sept. 6, 2023.)
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The NFL season will get underway right now when the Detroit Lions go to the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. Soccer is a numbers recreation, and there is been a shift underway within the numbers on gamers’ jerseys. NPR’s Gabriel Spitzer says a brand new psychological examine might assist clarify why.
GABRIEL SPITZER, BYLINE: Extensive receivers used to solely put on numbers within the 80s. Then, in 2004, the league modified the foundations and allowed them to as a substitute choose a quantity between 10 and 19. Inside a couple of years, a ton of them had chosen the decrease numbers. Kevin Seifert, a workers author for ESPN, did a fast census and located that just about 80% of NFL large receivers had made the change. He was inquisitive about why.
KEVIN SEIFERT: In speaking to a few of the gamers who did it, lots of them saved speaking about how they felt like they had been sooner in a quantity that was smaller. Lots of them stated they only thought they seemed higher or thinner.
SPITZER: Seifert questioned whether or not this was an actual factor. Do folks affiliate decrease numbers with swifter, svelter athletes? He contacted a UCLA psychology professor named Ladan Shams.
SEIFERT: She was very clear that she did not have any analysis to again it up, however that it might make loads of sense. The best way the mind works is that, over time, you may affiliate smaller numbers with smaller objects.
LADAN SHAMS: In order that was simply conjecture, a speculation. So as a result of there was no prior analysis, we determined to check it ourselves in my lab.
SPITZER: Shams did simply that. She confirmed folks photographs of soccer gamers of assorted physique varieties in a random jersey quantity and had them fee the gamers’ slenderness versus huskiness. She says decrease numbers had been strongly related to the notion that the participant was thinner. Even a tiny distinction mattered – 17 was seen as slimmer than 19. In fact, some numerals are wider than others. So to guarantee that that wasn’t affecting folks’s perceptions, she examined out numbers that had the identical digits however reversed – say, 18 versus 81.
SHAMS: And we acquired the identical outcomes, and we realized that the impact is definitely very sturdy.
SPITZER: Shams says what might be at work is a realized affiliation between excessive numbers and huge measurement. The 20-pound bag of rice is larger than the 5-pound bag.
SHAMS: Our brains maintain monitor of the statistics and the regularities in the environment. After which they use that data, and that varieties expectations that form our notion. And that is occurring on a regular basis, unbeknownst to us.
SPITZER: This yr’s NFL season has one more twist. For the primary time, gamers can be allowed to put on the bottom variety of all – zero.
SEIFERT: If No. 10 or No. 13 makes you look thinner and sooner than No. 84 or 86 or one thing, I ponder what the notion of zero could be.
SPITZER: The brand new examine is about to be revealed within the journal PLOS One.
Gabriel Spitzer, NPR Information.
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