The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind

by John Coates

Does the winner effect occur in humans? The question is controversial. Many social scientists have denied the existence of winning streaks or what are called “hot hands” in sports, claiming that athletes and fans who believe otherwise are subject to an illusion. But I think the winner effect does exist among humans. First, let us look at the stats. My colleague Lionel Page and I have done just that. To do so we followed as closely as possible the protocol used by biologists when studying animals in the wild. Lionel searched for athletes who were equally matched for physical resources and motivation, and then tested to see if winning on its own contributed to further wins. He came up with what I think is the most rigorous test of the winner effect in sports. Lionel managed to find a database of 623,000 professional tennis matches; from this sample he considered only those between players who were ranked one seed apart; then within this subset he further narrowed his search to matches that went to a tie break in the first set; and even further, to tie breaks decided by the narrowest possible margin, two points. In short, he looked at tennis players who were as closely matched as possible in rank and in playing form on the day of the match. Studying only these close matches, he found that the winner of the first set had a 60 percent chance of winning the second one, and, since the matches considered were the best of three sets, the match. In sports, winning contributes to fur...