Sports Fan Science Part IV

There was a chapter that I thought was really interesting regarding what it said about different motivations for different people. This leads to different emotional responses based on how a sports event progresses.

For example, if you are a fan because of a need for self-esteem/self-identity/achievement, then a win makes you feel really good and a loss makes you feel really bad. No duh, you say? Well think about these other examples.

If you are a sports fan because of a need for stimulation, then you feel really good from a close game and not from a blowout. It is less important who wins. If you also have one of the above, you want a close game and a win.

If you are a sports fan because of a need for an outlet of aggression, then you get a lot our of rivalry games and less out of less relevant games like interleague in baseball. If the players get into fights or other aggressive behaviors, you get your outlet.

If you are a sports fan because of a need for social interaction, then it matters more how many people you are watching the game with and how excited they get. The actual game becomes less important, regardless of whether it’s close or not or who wins.

Some people have more than one motivation for being a sports fan, but some are dominated by one of these motivations and therefore have different reactions to different games. Two people can watch the same game, cheering for the same team, and one feels really good afterwards and the other doesn’t.

Again, you may ask why I am posting this here. Well, motivation is critical for understanding human cognition and information processing. Understanding different motivations is critical to being a good team leader. This same kind of analysis needs to be done on your team and then you need to differentiate the incentives and motivations you offer to each person depending on what will get them to be the most productive.

For example, there is a lot of research showing that financial and competitive incentives are good for people doing individual physical labor or rote cognitive tasks. But they are counterproductive when creativity and/or teamwork is needed. And some people are more motivated by financial incentives than other people are. Some people are more motivated by competition than other people are. Knowing the difference can make you a much better manager.

Long term fix for the job market

Great editorial in WaPo this morning about the job market and training. They discuss two basic improvements the government can make that would not be very hard but would have a significant benefit to jobs. One is process-based. As any IE knows, the two things that kill a process are delays and uncertainty. So they suggest that the administration revisit the way that new businesses and new business initiatives are regulated and streamline it so that it is faster and more reliable. The good thing about this is that other than the cost of doing the upfront investigation, it would save money in the long run.

The second recommendation is training-based. Most college graduates don’t have all the skills that companies want (and I’m a professor!!). Even worse, ten years after graduation, by the time their communication and teamwork and leadership skills are finally up to par, their technical skills have gotten old. So they suggest the government support training and retraining programs to solve these two challenges. To make this acceptable to both parties, I would recommend doing it in a way that the private sector decides on the content (because the government is not particularly good at this), but the government perhaps provides matching funds or tax credits to support the programs.

These are just my initial thoughts. I am sure you can all add some additional improvements. Please use the comments section to add.

Restaurant Design

According to this article, we are changing the way we eat out. Because of our economic experiences over the last boom and bust cycle, apparently we want to have our cake and eat it too (almost literally). Instead of really cheap or really fancy, we want a discount establishment that has been gussied up. Think newly remodeled Red Lobster with an upgraded menu. Kind of like Target (Targey) instead of Walmart or Neiman Marcus. We want to feel like we are getting a good deal (because of the economic bust), but we also want to feel like we are treating ourselves well (left over from the previous boom).

Why is this relevant to us? Well, first of all, Darden (owner of Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, etc) is more likely to hire human factors practitioners than Joe's Diner or Bouchon de Paris. On the other hand, the only way that these places can offer fancier meals at discount prices after a huge capital expenditure on remodeling is with some great design, effective processes, strong decision making, etc, etc. Right in our wheelhouse.

Sports Fan Science Part III

I am 2/3 of the way done with the book. This one is right in my wheelhouse on research. It is about the information processing heuristics and biases that influence sports fans. One thing that this study found was that the stronger you score on a measure of fan intensity, the more likely you are to experience overconfidence bias, confirmation bias, and hindsight bias. Basically, when we superfans watch games, we really see it differently. The refs are biased, his feet really were in bounds, etc. We also exhibit more of the coping behavior I talked about in Part I. We are much more likely to talk and read about games after a win than after a loss as part of our coping strategy. We are more likely to rationalize bad on-field (Zidane in the World Cup) and off-field behavior (even Michael Vick).

These biases are stronger for fans high on dimension 1 (see Part II) because we care more about the players, wins, and losses.

Food Safety

Another great show last night on the Diane Rhieme first hour. It was about the e-coli situation in Germany and historically in the US. She had some experts on the show as guests who discussed food safety very intelligently. They varied in their positions from libertarian to paternalist so there was some good debate and disagreement. But in general, they all really thought through the pros and cons of their opinions and how they thought the food safety system could be improved. I learned a lot, and I already knew a lot about food safety. So I recommend listening to the show online if you have a chance.

Sports Fan Science Part II

I read another chapter of the sports mania book (see previous post) that jumped out at me. This one described two dimensions of sports fandom. A fan can have various levels of each one. There are some who are high on one and low on the other, and some that are high on both. Then there is the generic spectator who is low on both (or the non-fan who is a zero on both).

Curious yet? Here are the two dimensions.

1. The one we usually think of is affiliation with the team. People with strong need for self-identity attach their self-image to the team, rising and falling with the team’s performance (mostly on the field, but also off the field as I talk about later). These individuals tend to be knowledgeable about team statistics. They can watch the game home alone and still get as much out of it as being in a big group. They have long lasting emotional swings with wins and losses.

2. The second one is affiliation with the other fans (think Red Sox Nation). People with strong need for group affiliation attach their self-image to the fans, rising and falling with the excitement in the room while watching games. These individuals enjoy the camaraderie, high fiving other fans, and that kind of thing. They are less invested in wins and losses, so they don’t usually take the highs of a win or the lows of a loss home with them as much,

3. Individuals that are high on both dimensions have characteristics of both. They prefer watching in groups, experience high levels of arousal from the camaraderie of the experience, but also know lots of team statistics and take the emotional swings of wins and losses home with them.

There was a slight gender effect in that females have a stronger tendency for the group affiliation type of fandom and males have a stronger tendency for self-identity with the team. But of course, both genders can vary along both of these dimensions.

I enjoyed this because it really got me thinking about my own fan-ness. I am a virulent fan of the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, and Wolverines. But I realized that I am much higher on the self-identity dimension than the group affiliation dimension. I enjoy watching the games in groups and the whole yelling screaming high fiving experience. But the truth is that most of my emotional swings are private. I can’t even watch games in crowded bars if the other people aren’t watching the game because I get distracted. And I still love watching games home alone, as long as we win. And I do use the term "we" at will.

Sports fan science

I am reading a very interesting book on sports fandom. It’s an edited book where each chapter is written by a different author with expertise in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other areas. The chapters range from why do people become fans to why do some people let players who engage in off the field transgressions (e.g. Michael Vick) off the hook. The essays are a little outside our field, but have some similarities that can be applied to the workplace or consumer product design. Fans of Apple iPhones exhibit some of the same characteristics. It’s hard to summarize 16 different essays in one blog post, so I will just do one today and maybe one more later.

One finding is a coping strategy that I have seen a lot in workplace investigations. As a game approaches, the more fanatical a fan is, the more their confidence/expectation of win goes down (they become more pessimistic and less optimistic about winning). The authors hypothesize that this is a way of protecting yourself from the depression of loss. And this continues after a loss. Hindsight bias comes into play and you think of reasons why you didn’t really expect your team to win anyway. It always amazes me at the unconscious ways our brain protects us from negative affect like sadness and failure.