The wisdom of ignorant crowds: Predicting sport outcomes by mere recognition
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2011, Vol 6, Issue 1
Abstract
The collective recognition heuristic is a simple forecasting heuristic that bets on the fact that people’s recognition knowledge of names is a proxy for their competitiveness: In sports, it predicts that the better-known team or player wins a game. We present two studies on the predictive power of recognition in forecasting soccer games (World Cup 2006 and UEFA Euro 2008) and analyze previously published results. The performance of the collective recognition heuristic is compared to two benchmarks: predictions based on official rankings and aggregated betting odds. Across three soccer and two tennis tournaments, the predictions based on recognition performed similar to those based on rankings; when compared with betting odds, the heuristic fared reasonably well. Forecasts based on rankings—but not on betting odds—were improved by incorporating collective recognition information. We discuss the use of recognition for forecasting in sports and conclude that aggregating across individual ignorance spawns collective wisdom.
Authors and Affiliations
Stefan M. Herzog and Ralph Hertwig
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP677779
- DOI -
- Views 146
- Downloads 0
How to measure time preferences: An experimental comparison of three methods
In two studies, time preferences for financial gains and losses at delays of up to 50 years were elicited using three different methods: matching, fixed-sequence choice titration, and a dynamic “staircase” choice method....
American’s desire for less wealth inequality does not depend on how you ask them
A large body of survey research offers evidence that citizens are not always fully aware of the economic and political realities in their respective countries. Norton and Ariely (2011) extended this research to the domai...
An exploratory investigation of the impact of evaluation context on ambiguity aversion
This paper explores how context influences the evaluation of risky and ambiguous bets in the classic two-colour Ellsberg task. In three experiments context was manipulated via the presence/absence of additional bets agai...
Top scores are possible, bottom scores are certain (and middle scores are not worth mentioning): A pragmatic view of verbal probabilities
In most previous studies of verbal probabilities, participants are asked to translate expressions such as possible and not certain into numeric probability values. This probabilistic translation approach can be contraste...
An exploration of the motivational basis of take-some and give-some games
Surprisingly little research has investigated the particular motives that underlie choice behavior in social dilemma situations. The main aim of the present research was to ask whether behavior in take-some games (such a...