The control (i.e., point-light) condition, which removes both gaze and clothing
characteristics from the display, was implemented to investigate the effect of
providing goalkeepers with only the kinematic information of penalty takers for the
formation of impressions. Thus, inclusion of this condition enabled examination of
whether the biological motion information relating to dominant and submissive nonverbal
behavior is sufficient for instances of person perception (Marsh et al., 2006).
In Experiment 2, we introduced the IAT as a means of examining schema-driven
person perception in sport contexts to test whether the nonverbal behavior of an
athlete leads to categorizing that person into a specific person schema. In line with
social schema theory, which states that the mere exposure to an image of another
person can trigger—by association—the categorization of that person into a specific
schema, we expected that nonverbal behaviors signaling dominance are automatically
associated with a good soccer player schema, whereas submissive nonverbal
behaviors are automatically associated with a negative soccer player schema.