In the USA’s men’s World Cup match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, an American player called for a major penalty rather than a video review official. And many people complain about it.
Slow motion video reviews
Many sports now have video reviews. Due to the variety of cameras in each game, the officials can review the game from many angles. They can find out who last touched the ball before it went out of bounds. They can use these to determine if a player is offside. And they can use these to determine whether or not an omen has been committed and how serious the omen is.
In the World Cup, the video review is continuous and live during the matches. In addition to the on-field officials, there are video assistant referees (called VARs) who follow the game live and communicate with the on-field referee. They make suggestions and can provide support if the on-field referee misses something important.
They use different camera angles and have access to slow motion. Unfortunately, slow motion can change the way a foul is scored.
Slow-moving and deliberate evaluation
It’s interesting to see things in slow motion. There are a lot of amazing videos on YouTube about slow motion. Access to slow motion has changed our understanding of how things and animals work. Watching animals in slow motion is amazing.
But watching slowly also changes our assessment of events.
One of the most important judgments people make is whether an action was accidental or intentional. Importance is intent. When we evaluate how someone harmed another person, intent is important. When we think that what happened was an accident, we respond differently than when we think that someone intentionally harmed another person.
Slow motion forces people to take more deliberate action. Several experiments have been conducted in which people are shown actions at full speed and in slow motion. Viewers are asked to decide whether the act was accidental or intentional. For example, Caruso and colleagues (2016) first looked at how normal speed and slow motion affected judgments of intent to kill in a real surveillance video of a robbery and shooting. They found that people rated their intent to kill higher when they watched the video in slow motion.
Slow killers and sports
Slow movement also changes the assessment of intent and therefore the severity of fouls and penalties in sports. Interestingly, Caruso and colleagues (2016) looked not only at surveillance video of shootings, but also at videos of potential penalties in football games (American football, so not soccer). In this case, slow motion also led people to rate the contact as more intentional. Caruso and colleagues argued that when people see something in slow motion, they think the person has more time to plan and change their actions. When we see damage in slow motion, we think that the person can do more to stop the damage. So we think they were going to do it. At full speed, it is clear that there was not enough time to make these changes.
How about soccer or real soccer around the world? In various studies, researchers have found that slow motion leads to higher intention ratings (e.g., Schütz et al., 2026). Spitz and colleagues (2018) looked at real soccer officials evaluating the seriousness of errors seen at full speed and in slow motion. They found that when watching slow traffic, officials rated the punishment as more severe. In football terms, they are more likely to consider a foul to be more serious; that is, they gave more red cards than yellow cards. A red card is what the video review led to for the American soccer player.
Do friends hate us?
Was this USA foul worthy of a red card? Were officials biased by seeing slow traffic? Were the officials biased against Team USA? I don’t know enough football to judge whether that contact deserves a red card.
But many people are abusive. I’ve seen complaints that another player on another team had a similar foul and that more famous player didn’t get a red card. I’ve also seen people complain about the lack of fouls on the other team during the game. After watching the game, I clearly felt that the referees were against us.
But we always feel like the referees are against us and the other team fouls more than the angels on our team. A classic study in psychology documented this (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954). People tend to think that fouls called on their team are unfair, that the other team commits more fouls, and that the referees are biased. (I wrote about this important paper in relation to it perception and memory biases ago.)
So I don’t trust my judgement. But I also don’t trust the referees’ judgment when they rely on slow motion to judge how serious a foul is.
