Mindcoolness

A Cool Mind for a Full Life

  • Blog
  • Glossary
  • About
  • Contact

UFC Fighters’ Body Language During Staredown Indicates Winner

May 15, 2016 Dominic Reichl

Two years ago in grad school, a colleague and I conducted a little anthropological study on UFC fighters during staredowns—you know, those events where pairs of dehydrated competitors scowl at one another on the day before they beat each other up.

Since nonverbal behavior communicates internal states, personality traits, interaction motives, and dominance dynamics, we wanted to know: Which nonverbal cues could predict the outcome of the fight? Can body language during the staredown predict the winner?

First, we intended to look at dozens of variables that could be measured in video clips of staredowns:

  • Body parts: left-right foot, left-right hand, hands-shoulders, head-nose-ears, and eyes
  • Motion variables: overall movements, relative movements, velocities, and turbulences
  • Distance variables: alignments of body parts and interpersonal distance (who closes it?)
  • Behavior variables: smiles, touches, nods, gestures, and handshakes
  • Posture variables: direction, relaxedness, and expansiveness
  • Psychological ratings: perceived aggressiveness, perceived dominance, and perceived potential to win

We soon realized that this analytical endeavor was way out of proportion to the time limitations of our little project, so we agreed to solely capture three variables that seemed to be the most promising and interesting ones:

  1. Gaze behavior: Who breaks the eye contact? (Analysis method: observational frame-by-frame coding by multiple independent raters)
  2. Head movement: Who turns the head away first? (Analysis method: motion analysis software based on optical flow algorithms)
  3. Victory: Who wins the fight? (Analysis method: official UFC record)

These were our results of analyzing 87 staredown interactions (after eliminating all precarious cases):

ufc_results

Pearson’s chi-squared tests showed that these results were statistically significant (p was .024 and .038, resp.) while the effect size was minor (phi was only .241 and .223, resp.). The low statistical power is not surprising, given the fact that an MMA fight is an extremely complex event and surely not determined in its outcome by how a fighter subtly behaved on the previous day.

Have you spotted the most interesting finding in the table though? The fighter who broke eye contact or who turned away first was more strongly correlated with the winner!

Usually, confidence and dominance are associated with not breaking eye contact. If you shy away, you’re a coward, right? So what’s up with those findings of ours? According to my interpretation, staredowns are highly ritualistic events. You’re supposed to stare your opponent down. In this context, holding eye contact isn’t a spontaneous action. Staring is the expected, common baseline. By breaking eye contact first, the fighter unofficially ends the staredown sequence and thereby dominates the situation. He’s less emotionally attached, he doesn’t give a fuck to act overly intimidating, he just turns away.

Of course, this interpretation is speculative, and we had no methodological means to investigate any mediating causal relationships. Therefore, we didn’t bother to get our little study published in a peer-reviewed journal. Still, we did present it at a scientific conference and met with great acclaim. Here’s our poster:

ufc staredown body language

Blog body-intelligence, embodied cognition, mental toughness, psychology

Latest Post

Newsletter

Please check your inbox to confirm your subscription.

Copyright © 2023 • Content Disclaimer • Privacy Policy • Affiliate Disclosure • About
Dear reader, this website uses cookies for analytical purposes. We'll assume you're ok with it, but you can opt-out if you wish.
OK Give me more information.
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT