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The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences (1985)
| Venue: | Cognitive Psychology |
| Citations: | 197 - 1 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Gilovich85thehot,
author = {Thomas Gilovich and Cornell Universiiy and Brian W and Psychology De},
title = {The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences},
journal = {Cognitive Psychology},
year = {1985},
volume = {17},
pages = {295--314}
}
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Abstract
We investigate the origin and the validity of common beliefs regarding “the hot hand ” and “streak shooting ” in the game of basketball. Basketball players and fans alike tend to believe that a player’s chance of hitting a shot are greater following a hit than following a miss on the previous shot. However, detailed analyses of the shooting records of the Philadelphia 76ers provided no evidence for a positive correlation between the outcomes of successive shots. The same conclusions emerged from free-throw records of the Boston Celtics, and from a controlled shooting experiment with the men and women of Cornell’s varsity teams. The outcomes of previous shots influenced Cornell players ’ predictions but not their performance. The belief in the hot hand and the “detection ” of streaks in random sequences is attributed to a general misconception of chance according to which even short random sequences are thought to be highly rep-resentative of their generating process. G 1985 Academic Press. Inc. In describing an outstanding performance by a basketball player, re-porters and spectators commonly use expressions such as “Larry Bird has the hot hand ” or “Andrew Toney is a streak shooter. ” These phrases express a belief that the performance of a player during a particular period
Keyphrases
hot hand random sequence previous shot basketball player cornell player prediction varsity team generating process outstanding performance shooting experiment particular period andrew toney philadelphia 76ers free-throw record streak shooter positive correlation academic press boston celtic common belief successive shot shooting record player chance detailed analysis streak shooting larry bird general misconception
