Advancing judgment and decision-making research in sport psychology by using the body as an informant in embodied choices

Abstract

Successful sports performance often requires choosing what to do and how to do it in dynamic, complex, and uncertain environments. Thus, an understanding of the processes underpinning judgment and decision making in sports (JDMS) is crucial for both researchers and applied practitioners. Despite the research developments, examining JDMS from several perspectives, there are still significant gaps in the knowledge of the processes involved. In this article we explore how the theoretical understanding of JDMS can be extended by acknowledging that cognition and action dynamics are intertwined, deploy in parallel, and influence each other bidirectionally. We present a holistic approach that integrates simple heuristics and embodied cognition to explain JDMS. Importantly, our aim is not to devalue previous JDMS theories but rather to exemplify how embodied choices can redirect the current interpretation of judgment and decision-making processes in sports. Taking this embodied choice perspective, we reinterpret the findings of four prototypical research papers on JDMS, each representing one of the most influential perspectives in JDMS (i.e., the economic, social cognition, cognitive, and ecological dynamics approaches). Last, we discuss future directions for JDMS research from an embodied choice perspective.