ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Factors in Physical Education and Sport - Volume VIView all 40 articles
The Paradox of Progress: Structured Football, Self-Efficacy, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect – a randomized controlled trial
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nord universitet Fakultet for sykepleie og helsevitenskap, Bodø, Norway
- 2Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Psychology, NO‑7491 Trondheim, Norway, Trondheim, Norway
- 3Coerver Coaching & DLT Systems AS, Trondheim, Norway, Trondheim, Norway
- 4Football for Public Health (FFF), Steinkjer, Norway, STEINKJER, Norway
- 5Physical Education and Sport Science, Faculty of Teacher Education and Arts, Nord University, Levanger Norway, Levanger, Norway
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
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. 105 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 minutes 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. 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. 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.
Keywords: Children, Football, Social self-efficacy, perceived competence, Emotion Regulation
Received: 28 Jul 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Aune, Knutsen, Douglass, Pedersen and Lagestad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pål Lagestad, pal.a.lagestad@nord.no
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.