Bias, past experiences, mood and a range of other external factors influence our ability to recall events accurately. Often what we believe to be true, is in fact not. Memories that we have are not fixed, and research has shown that introducing even the subtlest piece of information later on can dramatically affect how people remember things they have seen or experienced – giving rise to a concept known as ‘false memory’ or the ‘misinformation effect’.

The work of prominent psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has proven how misleading information (from both internal and external sources) can blend with what a person really experienced, created a warped version of the truth. Even our emotions can lead our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for evaluating performance, down the wrong path whereby our emotional evaluation takes precedence over what actually took place. We can also be influenced by what others remember. Feedback or evaluation from teammates, officials, other coaches or spectators can shift our perceptions, as does the time between the event taking place and accuracy of which we look back on it. Relying on our memory alone to pass judgement on performance leads to subjective and often unreliable decision making.

Video provides us a valuable tool to look back on performance objectively and accurately. Watching a game or a video back shows us what really happened, hence why you’ll often hear the phrase “the tape doesn’t lie” when watching interviews with coaches or athletes in any of the big American sports.

The perception of ‘data and analytics’ often paint a picture of seeking exact numbers and diving deep into a world of equations and coding to find a magical concept of improving performance based on them. In reality, it is often much simpler, it allows a player or coach operate without the downsides of relying on memory alone.

To give a relatable example, a coach and a player may disagree about positioning after conceding a goal whilst on the penalty kill. The coach says the player was out of position, the player says they were reacting to an opposing player being in a more dangerous spot. Watching the video back together provides not only the opportunity to identify where the player actually was, but also to review what happened directly before the event and enable the player to recall their perceptions and response to the stimuli around them that led to them making the decision that they did.

So not only does using video dispel the ‘misinformation effect’ to identify to us the true events of a scenario, it also provides us with a huge step forward in the development of our athletes. Taking 2 minutes to sit down with a player (or even taking the time to watch something back on your own) and allowing them to connect their emotion understanding with the evidence in front of them, can have huge development advantages in both identifying learning gaps, and the growth of situational awareness and long term comprehension.