“That’s the truth”: Emre Can
Image: dpa
The defeat of the German national team in the European Championship test match against Belgium cannot only be explained by a bad initial phase. Emre Can is part of the solution – and part of the problem.
Dhe truth effect is a well-studied phenomenon in psychology. According to this, all those statements that someone does not hear for the first time are attributed a greater truth content than those that are new to them – regardless of how true they actually are. As a practical example of this process in implicit memory, stories about the German national soccer team have also recently been used. Thus, through a few repetitions, the narrative has settled that the elimination after the preliminary round at the World Cup in Qatar in winter was actually only due to a few “bad minutes” in the first game against Japan, which was therefore lost by 1:2 goals.
On Tuesday evening, the first selection of the German Football Association (DFB) lost another game, 2-3 against Belgium. Then, just before midnight, Niclas Füllkrug spoke about the state of the national team. Anyone who listened to the striker, who had already scored his sixth goal in his sixth international match in Cologne and who had quickly become a spokesman for the national team, had to be careful that the truth effect and waning attention at a late hour didn’t come together errors of perception.