The "moans" released by certain tennis players such as Rafael Nadal or María Sharapova during a match give them an advantage over their rivals , according to a study by scientists from the University of British Columbia and the University of Hawaii, published in the journal PLoS ONE . This implies that players who show more expressiveness during favorable plays may have a better chance of beating their opponents.
To reach this conclusion, psychologists Scott Sinnett and Alan Kingstone worked with 33 volunteer college students who were asked to watch videos of tennis players hitting the ball and try to guess as quickly as possible the direction of the hit by marking it on a keyboard. The tests revealed that when the hit was accompanied by a sound similar to "unnh" , like the one that certain tennis players usually make, the response was slower and the number of errors much higher . ? The sound interfered with the performance of the participants, making their response less fast and accurate, "according to the scientists, who want to carry out new studies to see if professional tennis players have managed to compensate for this effect with training so that the sound does not affect to your performance.
