Cognitive Bias in Fantasy Sports: Is Your Brain Sabotaging Your Team?

By R.M. Miller

Book Summary

A cognitive bias is a mental process that leads us to make illogical and sometimes irrational decisions. Most of us are unaware of these mental processes, although they are operating constantly. Most of the time, believe it or not, its no big deal. In fact, there is no doubt that cognitive biases still exist because they help us succeed as a species! In this work, you will learn why and how cognitive biases come about as well as why they might just be beneficial from an evolutionary perspective. More importantly, youll also find out how they play into your management of your fantasy sports teams. Spoiler alert: its not all good! From Confirmation Bias to Omission Bias and the Pseudocertainty Effect, plus many more, youll learn how the biases affect your decision-making and what to do to overcome the subtle sabotage your brain may be exerting on your fantasy season.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483647159

R.M. Miller

Author Biography Renee M. Miller, Ph.D. earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY where she is now on the faculty. She has published scientific research articles on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, neuronal development, and behavioral genetics. Her current research is focused on sex differences in behavioral choices. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science where she teaches several Neuroscience courses to undergraduates. Dr. Miller is an avid fantasy player, enjoying seasonal as well as daily fantasy NFL, NBA, and MLB. She resides in Rochester with her two boys and is proud that her older son started his first fantasy baseball league this year.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Renee M. Miller, Ph.D.

Illustrated by Chrys Callan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/30/2013

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table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Confirmation Bias

Chapter 2: Primacy And Recency Biases

Chapter 3: Framing

Chapter 4: The Endowment Effect

Chapter 5: Outcome Bias

Chapter 6: Omission Bias

Chapter 7: Self-Serving Bias

Chapter 8: Pseudocertainty Effect

Chapter 9: Daily Fantasy Sports

Chapter 10: Conclusions

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work would not be possible without the support of my family and friends. Thank you all for your encouragement and confidence. In particular thank you to my brother Greg Morsch, who invited me to play in my first fantasy football league and my brother Dylan MacTurk who supports not only all fantasy sports but is a writer who helped push me to start this work. Thank you to all the awesome leaguemates I play with every year for the fun and for the inspiration for some of the examples used within. Thank you to Chet Gresham and thefakefootball.com for posting an early version of these ideas and for all the terrific fantasy content on the sites, including thefakebasketball.com and thefakebaseball.com. Thank you to Jay Bellville for reading and re-reading drafts of this manuscript and providing all kinds of helpful support and suggestions. Lastly, thank you to The University of Rochester and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science for providing the intellectual environment that allowed these ideas to take shape and grow.

INTRODUCTION

Summer is such a great time for football. Optimism first creeps back into our consciousness in April after our team has successfully drafted, traded, and added free agents to overcome last season’s failings. All the training camp news is positive in July. By August and September we have Superbowl stars in our eyes. If you play fantasy football it’s compounded. We can all taste the championship victory even while we’re still at the draft table tasting the pizza and beer. Of course, there can be only one champion. To be that champion you need to do a lot of preparation ahead of time and not miss a thing all season long. And let’s face it—luck plays a huge role in any success (see Michael Lewis’ 2012 graduation speech to Princeton) and successful fantasy football management is no exception.

You probably play with a group having similar skills and knowledge as yourself, and the title often comes down to injuries and waiver wire pickups, right? So how can we get that extra edge that will push us past our fiercest opponents to the big trophy? Well, we can hope to be lucky, obviously, but that’s worth nothing as far as advice goes. We can study year round; read, watch, listen, and talk football as much as possible. I assume you already do this. I want to offer you another weapon in your fight for the title. In this book, I’ll point out several common fallacies, or biases that you may be employing in your