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Match Madness: Probability Matching in Prediction of the NCAA Basketball Tournament 1
Author(s) -
McCrea Sean M.,
Hirt Edward R.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00551.x
Subject(s) - tournament , basketball , matching (statistics) , normative , psychology , social psychology , tournament selection , econometrics , advertising , statistics , economics , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , law , political science , selection (genetic algorithm) , business , history , archaeology , combinatorics
Every year, billions of dollars are spent gambling on the outcomes of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. This study examines how individuals make predictions for tournament pools, one of the most popular forms of betting, in which individuals must correctly predict as many games in the tournament as possible. We demonstrate that individuals predict more upsets (i.e., wins by a higher seeded team) than would be considered rational by a normative choice model, and that individuals are no better than chance at doing so. These predictions fit a pattern of probability matching, in which individuals predict upsets at a rate equal to past frequency. This pattern emerges because individuals believe the outcomes of the games are nonrandom and, therefore, predictable.