ArticleFrontiers in psychology2025
The paradox of progress: structured football, self-efficacy, and the Dunning-Kruger effect - a randomized controlled trial.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Structured sports interventions are widely believed to enhance self-efficacy and emotion regulation in children. However, few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have rigorously tested these assumptions, and even fewer have explored the psychological mechanisms underlying unexpected or paradoxical outcomes. This study investigated the effects of an 11-session football-based intervention on social self-efficacy, perceived competence, and emotion regulation strategies in children aged 9-12, with the potential influence of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Methods: One hundred and five children (68 in the intervention group, 37 in the control group) participated in a 4-month RCT. The intervention group received 11 structured football sessions (75 min each) incorporating cognitive-behavioral skills training. The outcomes related to social self-efficacy, perceived competence, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression were measured at pre- and post-test using validated self-report scales. Mediation analysis examined whether cognitive reappraisal accounted for the intervention effects. Results: Contrary to the expectations, the control group reported significantly higher social self-efficacy and perceived competence at post-test than the intervention group. Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal did not mediate the relationship between group assignment and self-efficacy. No significant correlations were found between cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. We argue that these findings may reflect the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby intervention participants, having gained new skills and self-awareness, became more critical and accurate in their self-assessments, resulting in lower self-reported efficacy and competence. Discussion: Considering the results, we conclude that structured football interventions may inadvertently heighten children's self-awareness of their limitations, leading to more modest self-evaluation of efficacy and competence. These findings underscore the importance of considering meta-cognitive shifts and the Dunning-Kruger effect when interpreting intervention outcomes, suggesting that self-report measures may not fully capture genuine skill gains in youth interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.