Cognitive Biases in Sports

Cognitive biases are unconscious errors in our thinking that lead to irrational and oftentimes consequential decisions. They result from our brain’s effort to simplify complex topics into simpler, easier-to-digest parts.

These biases are present in all stages of life, including sports. In his book, The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis describes how Daryl Morey learned about them and tried to protect himself. Brentford owner Matthew Benham also tries to raise awareness by giving every new employee an edition of the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman.

Even knowing about these biases is not sufficient to overcome them as admitted by Kahneman. However, knowing about them can help to find ways to combat them and protect yourself against irrational tendencies.

Here are nine of the most common cognitive biases when playing, watching, or thinking about sports:

1. Outcome Bias

This is probably one of the most powerful biases and one of the hardest to overcome due to the results-driven attitude of all sports. You won? Great job! You lost? Bad job! Unfortunately, it’s not always that black and white.

In her book, Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke describes one of the most popular examples of outcome bias in the Super Bowl 2015. With 26 seconds lefts at the end of the fourth quarter, Seahawk’s coach Pete Carroll made a controversial decision. Instead of making a running play, he told his quarterback to pass the ball. The ball was intercepted. The Seahawks lost. But was it really a bad decision?

Turns out it wasn’t. In fact, the probability of an interception was below two percent, based on 15 years of NFL data. Pete Carroll made an understandable decision. He was just unlucky. In the public eye, however, his decision was harshly criticized as one of the worst calls ever as people only paid attention to the outcome, not to the decision itself.

2. Fundamental Attribution Error

Assume you’re at a party. You’re introduced to someone, but this person makes a disillusioned and uninterested impression. We are very quick to form an image of this person: "He just seems very unfriendly and arrogant."

When doing that, we put more emphasis on internal explanations and tend to ignore any external forces that might have influenced this person’s mood. Perhaps, he just had a bad day? Perhaps, he broke up with his girlfriend? Suddenly, with these explanations, he wouldn’t be such a bad guy anymore.

Now, think of a player like Jadon Sancho, for example. He had a bumpy start at Manchester United. If you would have watched him for the first time, you might have concluded that he’s just a bad player. You would have ignored the fact that he might need some time to get used to the Premier League or that he is not properly used in United’s system.

3. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias is another bias that’s powerful in all stages of life. Once we formed an opinion about something, we tend to ignore counterevidence or arrange it in such a way that it supports our beliefs.

For example, if you like a player, you may tend to ignore data that contradicts that opinion. You will find explanations why this data is not valid or why it is biased just to maintain your opinion. You only look for facts that support your opinion.

Confirmation Bias is particularly prevalent in scouting. Vfl Wolfsburg sporting director Jörg Schmadtke famously tried to avoid confirmation bias among his scouts by sending them to matches but not telling them which player he wants them to scout.

4. Availability Bias

Availability bias is also known as recency bias. It's the tendency that causes humans to place too much weight on information or events they can readily imagine. We tend to ignore the objective probabilities of those events over the long run.

If Cristian Ronaldo scored a free-kick from 30-yard, we will always remember this goal when he tries again. It was a memorable, impressive event. We might ignore the fact that he hasn't scored a free-kick goal in years despite hundreds of attempts as well as the base probability of 2% or 3%.

Another example is voting for the best player of the season. It’s an award for the entire season, but people tend to overweigh recent performance, and potentially be swayed by particularly strong finishes to the season.

5. Substitution Principle

When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution. We simply have no desire to take apart the difficult question and spend much time on it.

We often see this principle when faced with long-term decisions. It’s just difficult to look into the future and make reasonable predictions. It’s much easier to answer the question “Is this the right coach for my team now?” than answering the question “Is this the right coach for my team for the next five years?”

That said, this is not necessarily a bias with negative consequences as Kahneman points out. While easier questions are not completely accurate, their answers are still generally correlated with the correct answer. And a lot of the time, that's good enough.

6. Hindsight Bias

As the name suggests, we look at past events and believe that they were more predictable than they actually were. Once we know the outcome, we identify all the things that should have been clear.

A player transfer turned out badly? Chances are that the narrative quickly becomes that he was never a good fit and that this was obvious from the beginning. We tend to ignore the information, circumstances, and reasoning the time when making that decision.

Kahneman and other experts like Michael Mauboussin recommend a decision journal against this bias. When you make the decision, write down what you decided, why you decided as you did, and what you expect to happen. It immunizes yourself against thinking that you knew what was going to happen and how obvious it was.

7. Survivorship Bias

When evaluating data about certain groups of people, we often fail to consider failures that didn’t make the dataset. In other words, we only concentrate on the survivors.

Think about older strikers (30+) in the Premier League. When you compare their goalscoring numbers at age 30 with their goalscoring numbers aged 23, there’s a chance you’ll conclude that aging strikers are well worth the money.

However, when doing that, we ignore all the strikers that don’t play in the Premier League at 30 anymore because they aren’t good enough anymore. While they were able to play in the league with 23, they dropped off due to injuries or a transfer to an easier league.

Put differently, the dataset of 30+ strikers in the Premier League is heavily skewed toward the very best who are still able to perform at such a high level.

8. Sunk cost fallacy

It's the feeling that we must get a return due to our prior investment. Therefore, we continue to invest time, money, and energy into something we know is a losing proposition.

This fallacy often occurs in player recruitment. When an expensive player doesn't perform, we find it hard to give up on him. And the more we invest, the harder it becomes to let go. This is further complicated due to public scrutiny when one must admit that an expensive transfer wasn’t successful.

One way to decide whether it’s time to cut the losses and look into the future is by asking a simple question: Would I sign this player again? 

9. Present Bias

It's the tendency to overvalue immediate payoffs relative to larger future payoffs. In other words, given a choice between a payoff today and a payoff in the future, we will choose the payoff now. It can lead to decisions that our future self might regret.

For example, would you prefer a good player for this season or a great player in two years? Many people would choose the first option because of their desire for immediate success and impatience.