Yes, today is the day we finally talk about intuition. Yours is probably a lot less accurate than you would like to believe. Not wanting to labour this introductory paragraph, here's a 5-step guide that should give you a very very brief outline of why that is...
1. Recap of Availability
We won't waste a lot of time here. Remember how we said that it's about forming judgements based on cognitive ease ("the ease with which instances come to mind"), that's still true. Recency is highly valued, a memory will be more available if it is a memory of the weekend, rather than a memory of last month. We comfortably remember the details of Man City's 5-0 thrashing of Newcastle, whereas the 1-1 home draw with Hull from February 7th is much less available. Your gut probably said good things about Man City ahead of the Barca game, because the most available recent memory you have is of a surprisingly comfortable victory. You unwittingly ignore that the four results they achieved prior to the midweek win at Stoke in the game before last, were a 1-1 draw away at Everton, a 2-0 home loss against Arsenal, and back-to-back 1-1 draws away at Chelsea and at home to Hull City. To repeat, it's not your fault. You are designed to give much greater weight to recent events, in fact it would've taken deliberate searching of memory to even recall the Arsenal or Hull performances, and they probably feel as distant to you as they do to me.
2. Involvement (what are the chances you'll think it through?)
When motivated to, we will carefully consider certain issues. When we lack the motivation of personal involvement, we are happy to rely first on instinct, and second on superficial cues (for details see Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman 1981). Are we that involved in a vague forecast of who will win out of Man City and Barca? Almost certainly not. In fact, as soon as we're asked;
"So, Billy, what do you think will happen tonight?"
We tend to find that an answer to the question bounces immediately into our brain, and this answer will be very seductive, and it will certainly feel valid. It's only when I remind you how quickly that answer appeared that you might realise it is not a proper consideration of all the available facts. Instead of sitting and considering the question, we're most of us pretty happy to go with whatever first comes into our brains, with some possible small amount of elaboration. If your brain instantly goes "Man City" three days after they hammered Newcastle, and Barca were beaten 1-0 at home by Malaga, then you are relying upon the bias of availability, rather than making a reasoned judgement. That you might be right is surely neither here nor there...
3. The Intervention of Confirmation Bias
Imagine instead of saying "City", you said "Brighton". You (a nameless individual) may have sat with me and watched Middlesbrough-Leeds at the weekend. We may both have had a very negative opinion of Leeds' playing style, and the dubious qualities of their hapless lone striker, Steve Morison, whose goal record this season will be initiated just as soon as he actually gets one. So, when forecasting their result in travelling to play a team that scored 4 goals at the weekend in winning at home, you may have weighed this off against your impressions of the Leeds performance, and come up with the conclusion that Brighton could be on course to get a hatful. How do you justify this prediction? Why do you even need to? Well, what if someone questions you? Immediately you'll seek substantiating evidence. Well, you focus on the fact they scored 4. You ignore their league position (which going into the game was 20th), and their failure to win in 4 league games before the weekend, and the fact Birmingham scored 3 in that match, and so only lost by 1. You also ignore that all of Brighton's goals came from a centre midfielder and a right-back.
Likewise, if you back Barca, you play down the City 5-0 hammering at the weekend, and play up Barca's 10 consecutive wins with 34 goals scored prior to the Malaga catastrophe. The point is that you accept the bits that support your theory, and ignore or downplay the significance of stats or info that contradict it. That's not unreasonable, it is simply human.
4. Always Right, not really wrong at all
Imagine you did forecast a City victory, and now they've lost. To you the factors that affected the outcome have probably been officially recorded as unforeseeable. When reflecting on your wrongness, you will focus on the good fortune required for the Suarez opening goal, the disappointing display from the usually reliable (though recently erratic) Vincent Kompany, and the red card for Gael Clichy. All of which reduce the sense that you really made an unreasonable error. Now imagine you forecasted that comfortable Brighton win. You are a prescient, almighty psychic God (in fact, you probably already were), this outcome is just yet further evidence of your extraordinary genius. Even though you said it would be by a hatful, that doesn't matter, and you don't need to analyse the game itself for possible moments of good fortune, or the intervention of a dodgy ref. You were right, because you are great (or, of course, you were wrong, but that's hardly your fault).
5. The Consequence of This Final Bias
It sustains an illusion - that you can accurately forecast football results. You can't. You couldn't have forecasted Gael Clichy's split second decision to jump in on Dani Alves, which halted City's march back into the match. You couldn't have forecasted the last minute Zabaleta lunge which cost a penalty, and you still couldn't have forecasted that Leo Messi (who for the last month and a half has comfortably eclipsed Cristiano Ronaldo as the games foremost talent) would miss, and even if you forecasted the Hart save, you could never have reasonably forecast Messi putting a rebound wide when it was palmed straight back down the middle to him. You couldn't have foreseen the Suarez flick bouncing back to him off Kompany for the first goal. You might've suspected Barca would dominate the chances, but you couldn't have guaranteed that they were going to take any of them, and at half-time most of us couldn't foresee a City fightback. The future is unknowable, and when it comes to football this unknowability factor seems to only go off and increase. Sometimes you are right, and because you take credit for that and deflect blame when you're wrong, you feed a misconception that you have forecasting prowess. So as soon as your gut says "Man City" you gain total confidence in that impression. You have systematically built up a mental representation of yourself as an oracle. But you aren't. You're just guessing. I think I'm an oracle, but my winnings and deposits into a Betfair account I've had running for almost five entire years now are, give or take a fiver here and there, pretty much exactly even. The money tells me I am right at a rate of chance, I tell myself that I am a prophetic prodigy with prodigious and unparalleled foresight.
So...
Just reconsider, if you think about your abilities to guess results the way I think about mine. You can't know what is going to happen - being right OR wrong involves a lot of luck. So many modifying events occur in a football match, you cannot foresee them all. You are not a prophetic prodigy with prodigious powers or foresight. But then you're not supposed to be. It is not the way the world works, it is not the way your brain works. You guess about football in a perfectly acceptable way, even if you don't want to accept it. Moderating your self-opinion, taking equal responsibility for successes and losses should help you also to moderate your confidence in your predictions, and the amount of money you are willing to back them with. Developing a healthy sense of my own shortcomings has allowed me personally to severely reduce my gambling expenses. If you want to do this as well, every time you go to place a bet or deposit cash into your Betfair account, tell yourself you've got a very decent chance of being wrong, and then save that money and get yourself an eclair.
2. Involvement (what are the chances you'll think it through?)
When motivated to, we will carefully consider certain issues. When we lack the motivation of personal involvement, we are happy to rely first on instinct, and second on superficial cues (for details see Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman 1981). Are we that involved in a vague forecast of who will win out of Man City and Barca? Almost certainly not. In fact, as soon as we're asked;
"So, Billy, what do you think will happen tonight?"
We tend to find that an answer to the question bounces immediately into our brain, and this answer will be very seductive, and it will certainly feel valid. It's only when I remind you how quickly that answer appeared that you might realise it is not a proper consideration of all the available facts. Instead of sitting and considering the question, we're most of us pretty happy to go with whatever first comes into our brains, with some possible small amount of elaboration. If your brain instantly goes "Man City" three days after they hammered Newcastle, and Barca were beaten 1-0 at home by Malaga, then you are relying upon the bias of availability, rather than making a reasoned judgement. That you might be right is surely neither here nor there...
3. The Intervention of Confirmation Bias
Imagine instead of saying "City", you said "Brighton". You (a nameless individual) may have sat with me and watched Middlesbrough-Leeds at the weekend. We may both have had a very negative opinion of Leeds' playing style, and the dubious qualities of their hapless lone striker, Steve Morison, whose goal record this season will be initiated just as soon as he actually gets one. So, when forecasting their result in travelling to play a team that scored 4 goals at the weekend in winning at home, you may have weighed this off against your impressions of the Leeds performance, and come up with the conclusion that Brighton could be on course to get a hatful. How do you justify this prediction? Why do you even need to? Well, what if someone questions you? Immediately you'll seek substantiating evidence. Well, you focus on the fact they scored 4. You ignore their league position (which going into the game was 20th), and their failure to win in 4 league games before the weekend, and the fact Birmingham scored 3 in that match, and so only lost by 1. You also ignore that all of Brighton's goals came from a centre midfielder and a right-back.
Likewise, if you back Barca, you play down the City 5-0 hammering at the weekend, and play up Barca's 10 consecutive wins with 34 goals scored prior to the Malaga catastrophe. The point is that you accept the bits that support your theory, and ignore or downplay the significance of stats or info that contradict it. That's not unreasonable, it is simply human.
4. Always Right, not really wrong at all
Imagine you did forecast a City victory, and now they've lost. To you the factors that affected the outcome have probably been officially recorded as unforeseeable. When reflecting on your wrongness, you will focus on the good fortune required for the Suarez opening goal, the disappointing display from the usually reliable (though recently erratic) Vincent Kompany, and the red card for Gael Clichy. All of which reduce the sense that you really made an unreasonable error. Now imagine you forecasted that comfortable Brighton win. You are a prescient, almighty psychic God (in fact, you probably already were), this outcome is just yet further evidence of your extraordinary genius. Even though you said it would be by a hatful, that doesn't matter, and you don't need to analyse the game itself for possible moments of good fortune, or the intervention of a dodgy ref. You were right, because you are great (or, of course, you were wrong, but that's hardly your fault).
5. The Consequence of This Final Bias
It sustains an illusion - that you can accurately forecast football results. You can't. You couldn't have forecasted Gael Clichy's split second decision to jump in on Dani Alves, which halted City's march back into the match. You couldn't have forecasted the last minute Zabaleta lunge which cost a penalty, and you still couldn't have forecasted that Leo Messi (who for the last month and a half has comfortably eclipsed Cristiano Ronaldo as the games foremost talent) would miss, and even if you forecasted the Hart save, you could never have reasonably forecast Messi putting a rebound wide when it was palmed straight back down the middle to him. You couldn't have foreseen the Suarez flick bouncing back to him off Kompany for the first goal. You might've suspected Barca would dominate the chances, but you couldn't have guaranteed that they were going to take any of them, and at half-time most of us couldn't foresee a City fightback. The future is unknowable, and when it comes to football this unknowability factor seems to only go off and increase. Sometimes you are right, and because you take credit for that and deflect blame when you're wrong, you feed a misconception that you have forecasting prowess. So as soon as your gut says "Man City" you gain total confidence in that impression. You have systematically built up a mental representation of yourself as an oracle. But you aren't. You're just guessing. I think I'm an oracle, but my winnings and deposits into a Betfair account I've had running for almost five entire years now are, give or take a fiver here and there, pretty much exactly even. The money tells me I am right at a rate of chance, I tell myself that I am a prophetic prodigy with prodigious and unparalleled foresight.
So...
Just reconsider, if you think about your abilities to guess results the way I think about mine. You can't know what is going to happen - being right OR wrong involves a lot of luck. So many modifying events occur in a football match, you cannot foresee them all. You are not a prophetic prodigy with prodigious powers or foresight. But then you're not supposed to be. It is not the way the world works, it is not the way your brain works. You guess about football in a perfectly acceptable way, even if you don't want to accept it. Moderating your self-opinion, taking equal responsibility for successes and losses should help you also to moderate your confidence in your predictions, and the amount of money you are willing to back them with. Developing a healthy sense of my own shortcomings has allowed me personally to severely reduce my gambling expenses. If you want to do this as well, every time you go to place a bet or deposit cash into your Betfair account, tell yourself you've got a very decent chance of being wrong, and then save that money and get yourself an eclair.
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