The Hot Hand Belief and Framing Effects

Abstract

Purpose: Recent evidence of the hot hand in sport—where success breeds success in a positive recency of successful shots, for instance—indicates that this pattern does not actually exist. Yet the belief persists. We used 2 studies to explore the effects of framing on the hot hand belief in sport. We looked at the effect of sport experience and task on the perception of baseball pitch behavior as well as the hot hand belief and free-throw behavior in basketball. Method: Study 1 asked participants to designate outcomes with different alternation rates as the result of baseball pitches or coin tosses. Study 2 examined basketball free-throw behavior and measured predicted success before each shot as well as general belief in the hot hand pattern. Results: The results of Study 1 illustrate that experience and stimulus alternation rates influence the perception of chance in human performance tasks. Study 2 shows that physically performing an act and making judgments are related. Specifically, beliefs were related to overall performance, with more successful shooters showing greater belief in the hot hand and greater predicted success for upcoming shots. Conclusions: Both of these studies highlight that the hot hand belief is influenced by framing, which leads to instability and situational contingencies. We show the specific effects of framing using accumulated experience of the individual with the sport and knowledge of its structure and specific experience with sport actions (basketball shots) prior to judgments.

Keywords::

• contextual effects
• decision making
• sequential judgment
• sport belief

Acknowledgments

We thank the performance psychology group at the Institute of Psychology at the German Sport University in Cologne, Germany, for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Due to the large number of practice trials from the specific location of the free-throw line, basketball shots from this location develop a unique memory representation different to those from other locations. The free throw has thus been dubbed an especial skill, with implications for factors controlling its success, such as the stronger representation. See Keetch, Schmidt, Lee, and Young (2010) for a discussion of especial skills.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/urqe.