Motivated reasoning in the prediction of sports outcomes and the belief in the “hot hand”

ABSTRACT

The present paper explores the role of motivation to observe a certain outcome in people’s predictions, causal attributions, and beliefs about a streak of binary outcomes (basketball scoring shots). In two studies we found that positive streaks (points scored by the participants’ favourite team) lead participants to predict the streak’s continuation (belief in the hot hand), but negative streaks lead to predictions of its end (gambler’s fallacy). More importantly, these wishful predictions are supported by strategic attributions and beliefs about how and why a streak might unfold. Results suggest that the effect of motivation on predictions is mediated by a serial path via causal attributions to the teams at play and belief in the hot hand.

KEYWORDS:

• Binary prediction
• motivated reasoning
• hot hand
• causal attribution
• sports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Because there was not an effect of valence on the belief that streaks tend to end (i.e., gambler’s fallacy as a prediction model), this factor was not included in the model.

2. As in Study 1, because there was not an effect of valence on the belief that streaks tend to end (gambler’s fallacy), this variable was not included in the model.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the grant SFRH/BD/73378/2010 awarded to the first author from the Foundation for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Portugal).