Subconscious rules when players make close calls

When two players argue furiously who really touched the ball last, both could genuinely believe they are telling the truth.

It is possible, just, that footballers aren’t lying after all. Instead, when two players argue furiously after a tackle about who really kicked the ball out, both could genuinely believe they are telling the referee the truth.

The reason why, a new study contends, is that it is not they who are being misleading but their subconscious.

Thanks to a quirk of how the brain works, we are wired to perceive our own actions as occurring a 20th of a second earlier than those of others — and this means that we can get confused about the order of events.

Ty Tang and Michael McBeath, from Arizona State University, began their research after watching basketball games. “You have this situation that happens all the time where two people are reaching for the ball, both hit it, it goes out of bounds and both claim the other hit it last,” Mr Tang, a PhD student, said.

The research, published in the journal Science Advances, found this could be because of the way our brains distort our perceptions.

“It’s really easy to imagine both are just trying to get an advantage for their own team, but there might be something deeper,” it says.

“The way we interpret it, it’s not that people are 50 milliseconds ahead with their own actions, it’s that they are 50 milliseconds behind (registering) those of others,” Mr Tang said.

The Times