Making the seemingly impossible appear possible: Effects of conjunction fallacies in evaluations of bets on football games

Nilsson, Håkan; Andersson, Patric

doi:10.1016/j.joep.2009.07.003

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Soccer fans also struggle to estimate complex probabilities involving the joint estimation of multiple soccer matches, although these events do not feature frequently in British gambling advertising (Erceg & Galić, 2014;Nilsson & Andersson, 2010;Teigen, Martinussen, & Lund, 1996 (Newall, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral complexity of British gambling advertising

Newall

2017

Addiction Research & Theory

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Background: The scale and complexity of British gambling advertising has increased in recent years. "Live-odds" TV gambling adverts broadcast the odds on very specific, complex, gambles during sporting events (e.g., in soccer, "Wayne Rooney to score the first goal, 5-to-1," or, "Chelsea to win 2-1, 10-to-1"). These gambles were analyzed from a behavioral scientific perspective (the intersection of economics and psychology). Method: A mixed methods design combining observational and experimental data. A content analysis showed that live-odds adverts from two months of televised English Premier League matches were biased towards complex, rather than simple, gambles. Complex gambles were also associated with high bookmaker profit margins. A series of experiments then quantified the rationality of participants' forecasts across key gambles from the content analysis (Total N = 1,467 participants across 5 Experiments). Results: Soccer fans rarely formed rational probability judgments for the complex events dominating gambling advertising, but were much better at estimating simple events. Conclusions: British gambling advertising is concentrated on the complex products that mislead consumers the most.Behavioral scientific findings are relevant to the active public debate about gambling.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral complexity of British gambling advertising

Newall

2017

Addiction Research & Theory

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“…For instance, behavioral economists have looked at the consequences of the fallacy for understanding real life economic behavior, measuring the robustness of this bias in an economic context with incentives or in betting situations (e.g. Charness et al 2010;Nilsson and Andersson 2010;Erceg and Galic 2014). They have also investigated whether the cognitive abilities of subjects are related to behavioral biases in general (and to the conjunction fallacy in particular, cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum-like models cannot account for the conjunction fallacy

2016

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Human agents happen to judge that a conjunction of two terms is more probable than one of the terms, in contradiction with the rules of classical probabilities-this is the conjunction fallacy. One of the most discussed accounts of this fallacy is currently the quantum-like explanation, which relies on models exploiting the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to investigate the empirical adequacy of major quantum-like models which represent beliefs with quantum states. We first argue that they can be tested in three different ways, in a question order effect configuration which is different from the traditional conjunction fallacy experiment. We then carry out our proposed experiment, with varied methodologies from experimental economics. The experimental results we get are at odds with the predictions of the quantum-like models. This strongly suggests that this quantum-like account of the conjunction fallacy fails. Future possible research paths are discussed.

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“…In accordance with Griffin and Tversky's (1992) explanation of the overconfidence bias, the reason for this probably comes from the way the bettors use their information. For example, it has been shown that sport teams that play at home have a higher probability of winning the match than away teams (Nilsson & Andersson, 2010). This means that the information about where the game is played has a fairly good predictive validity (i.e., weight).…”

Section: Overconfidence Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nilsson and Andersson (2010) conducted a study in which they presented their participants with various outcomes of football matches that varied in the likelihood of success (i.e., probability). When the conjunction consisted of the outcome with a low or intermediate probability that was combined with one or two outcomes that had high probability, it was perceived as more likely than the less likely outcome presented alone.…”

Section: Conjunction Fallacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, cognitive biases may lead to overconfidence regarding the possibility of winning and, consequently, wrong decisions about money investments (Nilsson & Andersson, 2010). In this paper we described the results of a study that investigated the occurrence of the two cognitive biases, the overconfidence bias and the conjunction fallacy, in predictions of outcomes of football matches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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