Rooney, what are your intentions?

Do you ever marvel at your mysterious powers as a human being? Maybe we are not as good as prof X, but I think we all try to read minds a little bit to guess motives of co-humans. Are you reading this blog? You must be either gesture-crazy, family, or a lost soul. In 2004, Tom Troscianko wrote about how people can predict criminal behaviour from looking at someone's gestures and body position in security camera (CCTV) recordings (pdf). Lucky for the vandals we are still facing a huge challenge before we can program a computer to do the same. But it shows we use what we see of the movements to guess intentions (see Baldwin et.al.) What did you make of Rooney's dismissal? Did he commit a foul? Was it an accident? He probably did not intend to castrate Carvalho, but perhaps he wanted to unleash his anger? These questions are anything but academic. In fact, even when you have read all the academic stuff in the links above you will not be wiser. If you were the referee, you have only your own two eyes to trust and the intentions you can see. Could instant replay really help?

Tags: intention, perception, sports, ToM, psychology, movement, Rooney