Fabian Wunderlich

We investigated how predictions regarding the outcome of sports competitions are affected by concurrent predictions which were believed to originate from either a human sports expert or an AI system. Participants were asked to estimate the probability of a certain team to win a group match against the respective opponent in various matches of the 2024 Olympic Games and to report their confidence in that estimate. Moreover, they received numerical estimates for that probability which were either high or low, and which were believed to originate from a human expert or an AI system. Participants’ estimates were biased towards these supplementary estimates, thus reflecting an anchoring effect. Yet, this effect’s size was independent of the believed source of the anchor and even non-significantly higher for AI support. Confidence in provided judgments was even significantly higher when the believed origin of supplementary estimates was AI rather than human. Altogether, the results suggest no bias against AI-generated sports outcome predictions, highlighting the task-dependency of reliance on AI.

Task such as hammering or throwing darts involve intentional actions performed with the anticipation of a desired effect that requires precision to achieve success. Visual perception of the goal, defined in an external frame of reference, plays a crucial role in specifying movement parameters in a body-centered frame of reference. Physical interruption of the task decouples the internal and external frames of reference leading to rapid performance decrements. Motor calibration, as noted by the ‘Calibration Effect’, is the fine-tuning of motor commands following performance-related feedback in the external frame of reference. Here we test the calibration effect with non-skilled populations in both a sport specific and an everyday type of task, darts and hammering. Participants performed 20 rounds of five attempts of hitting a goal with a stable bodily position. Between rounds they moved around to perturb the fine tuning. The first repetition within a round of repeated attempts was less accurate than the subsequent attempts within that same round, even if controlling for gradual learning effects. Thus, the calibration effect, a rapid component of warm-up, is present both in professional athletes and unskilled dart players as well as in everyday activities such as hammering.