Creative and Intuitive Decision-Making Processes: A Comparison of Brazilian and German Soccer Coaches and Players

Abstract

Purpose: The concepts of creativity and intuition have been well studied in isolation, but less is known about their distinctive contributions to option generation in decision making. Method: We examined the relation between creative and intuitive decision making in two studies-one involving coaches and one involving soccer players-using video footage of real soccer matches. Additionally, we analyzed whether this relation is culture generic or culture specific by conducting matched cross-cultural studies in a European and a South American country. Results: In Study 1, results indicate a conceptual overlap of creativity and intuition for Brazilian and German soccer coaches. Furthermore, coaches did not differ in their evaluation of creative and intuitive actions of players of both cultures. In Study 2, we found that for both subsamples the total number of generated options was positively correlated with the quality of the first and the final option and that the quality of players' first (intuitive) option was higher than that of options generated later. Moreover, results indicate a positive correlation between a player's creativity score and the quality of the first generated option for the whole sample. Conclusion: Overall, our findings provide meaningful information regarding athletes' and coaches' optiongeneration processes in decision making in complex team sports.

Understanding a Player’s Decision-Making Process in Team Sports: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence

“…Sixteen studies presented the decision-making process as one encompassed by a player’s possession of specific key perceptual–cognitive skills [ 40 , 41 , 43 , 44 , 53 , 55 , 56 , 64 , 66 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 73 , 82 , 83 , 84 ] namely; the utilisation of domain knowledge in perceiving informational cues [ 44 , 55 , 66 ], the identification of global, salient and predictive cues [ 40 , 41 , 64 , 69 , 73 , 84 ], rapid retrieval of knowledge from memory representations [ 40 , 43 , 44 , 56 , 69 ], option generation [ 40 , 64 , 66 , 69 , 73 ], and the role of intuition in the form of the take the first heuristic [ 40 , 59 , 64 , 73 , 80 ]. A concurrent theme is the prevalence of representation as a connecting mechanism between what players see and how they act.…”

“…Four of these studies investigated expert team sport players decision-making, in the form of the intuitive take the first heuristic or option generation processes [ 40 , 64 , 73 , 80 ]. Klatt et al [ 64 ] compared the decision-making accuracy of elite Brazilian and German senior academy football players through a video decision-making task. Intuition was measured by assessing the accuracy of participants’ first options, whilst creativity was measured in the number of appropriate options participants were able to generate.…”

“…Participant responses in all three studies were valued against an expert coaching panel who indicated a rank of which options were best in each trial. Klatt et al [ 64 ] found that Brazilian players were more accurate than German players in their decision-making as they generated a higher number of options, whilst also being more accurate in their first option. Basevitch et al [ 40 ] reported that experts were more accurate than near experts in their decision response, their intuitive responses were more effective when less time was available, whilst generating more options was more effective when more time was available.…”

“…Twelve studies explored the use of cues within player decision-making [ 40 , 54 , 57 , 59 , 61 , 64 , 65 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 73 , 84 ]. Johnston and Morrison [ 61 ] found that skilled players were able to cluster higher order cues together into one source of information (e.g., the width of a defensive line), whereas less skilled players more readily focus on discrete bits of information (e.g., gaps between individual defenders).…”

“…Studies included within this review that have explored experts decision-making processes through the take the first heuristic [ 40 , 64 , 73 ], option generation [ 40 , 44 , 64 , 73 ], and contextual priors [ 57 , 65 , 69 ] demonstrate clear findings that experts are able to perceive information of a global and salient nature earlier than less skilled players.…”