Psychological momentum in contests: The case of scoring before half-time in football

Gauriot, Romain; Page, Lionel

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.015

Cited by 27 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Several scholars have failed to find evidence of PM in tennis when examining the outcome of sets (Silva et al, 1988;Malueg and Yates, 2010) and when examining the sequences of service points (O'Donoghue and Brown, 2009). Additionally, Parsons and Rohde (2015) and Gauriot and Page (2018) find no support for the existence of PM in football. The authors examine the effect of certain events in the first half and find no significant effect on teams' second-half performance.…”

Section: Related Empirical Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most empirical studies address the question of whether PM exists or whether it is a cognitive illusion. While some studies find a significant change in performance following a precipitating event and thus supporting evidence for the existence of PM (e.g., Cohen-Zada et al, 2017;Green and Zwiebel, 2017;Iso-Ahola and Mobily, 1980), others fail to find evidence of the existence of PM (e.g., Gauriot and Page, 2018;Gilovich et al, 1985;Silva et al, 1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If interruptions have the potential to terminate PM, it is not surprising that several studies employing a setting where the performance task is interrupted find no evidence of PM (e.g., Gauriot and Page, 2018;Malueg and Yates, 2010;Parsons and Rohde, 2015). Furthermore, apart from several studies that find evidence of PM for men but not for women (e.g., Cohen-Zada et al), only Livingston (2012) addresses experience as a personal factor, and Dietl and Nesseler (2017) address "controlling the match" as a contextual factor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating the Conditions for Psychological Momentum in the Field: Evidence From Men’s Professional Tennis

et al. 2019

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We examine how interruptions and personal and contextual factors affect the manifestation of psychological momentum (PM). Using men's singles tennis point-by-point data from the two Grand Slam tournaments, Wimbledon and Roland Garros, between 2009 and 2014 (N=29,934), we employ realized break points as the potential triggers of PM and rest periods between two sequential games as the exogenous task interruptions. Controlling for player ability and the state of the match, we find that players are more likely to win the next game after realizing a break point only if there is no rest period between games. Thus, our results suggest that interruptions terminate the momentum effect. Furthermore, we find that the effect of PM increases for players with a lesser relative ability and at a later stage within a match, showing the importance of personal and contextual factors for PM.

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Section: Related Empirical Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating the Conditions for Psychological Momentum in the Field: Evidence From Men’s Professional Tennis

et al. 2019

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“…While the literature has addressed similar questions, this specific conjecture has not been properly investigated. In their influential paper, Gauriot and Page (2018) examine whether scoring just before the halftime break is more important for a team's subsequent performance than scoring during other stages of the first half. The authors exploit the quasi-random occurrence of goals after the ball hits the post and find no evidence that the final minutes before the break are more important than other phases during the first half.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors find that scoring a goal just before the break is detrimental for the home team but has no effect on the performance of the away team. Thus, in their examination on the “scoring just before halftime” myth, not only do Baert and Amez (2018) use a different approach than Gauriot and Page (2018), but they also find divergent results.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Advantage of Scoring Just Before the Half-Time Break—Pure Myth? Quasi-Experimental Evidence From European Football

Meier

Flepp

Ruedisser

et al. 2020

Journal of Sports Economics

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We examine whether the moment just before the halftime break is a particularly good time to score a goal. Using detailed data from the top five European football leagues between the 2013/14 and 2017/18 seasons, we exploit the quasi-random occurrence of goals scored just before and just after the halftime break. In the former situation, the game is exogenously interrupted by a break immediately after the goal, whereas in the latter situation, the game continues without interruption. We show that in the case of a goal being scored just before halftime, the scoring team benefits more from the halftime break than the conceding team. JEL Classification: L83, Z20

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Momentum in contests and its underlying behavioral mechanisms

Kubitz,

Page,

Wan

2024

Econ Theory

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We investigate the existence and nature of momentum in performance in contests and whether momentum arises for reasons in part unrelated to rational strategies in contests. To address this question, we look at a setting where strategic considerations should not generate momentum: a sequence of two rounds of independent contests. We show that if we relax the assumption of payoff maximizing agents, positive momentum (success tends to be followed by more success) or negative momentum (success tends to be followed by less success) can arise through several behavioral mechanisms that have, until now, not been widely considered in the literature. We examine these predictions in an experiment. Using random variations in the participants’ winning chances in a first contest to identify the causal effect of success on later performance, we find that a positive momentum exists. Using several experimental conditions which modulate the effect of the different possible mechanisms, we find that the pattern of momentum is most compatible with players having adaptive preferences, whereby they may gain or lose interest in the second contest after respectively winning or losing the first one. These results suggest that standard models of contests do not fully capture the behavioral dynamics existing in competitive settings.

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Psychological momentum in contests: The case of scoring before half-time in football

Cited by 27 publications

References 13 publications

Investigating the Conditions for Psychological Momentum in the Field: Evidence From Men’s Professional Tennis

Investigating the Conditions for Psychological Momentum in the Field: Evidence From Men’s Professional Tennis

The Advantage of Scoring Just Before the Half-Time Break—Pure Myth? Quasi-Experimental Evidence From European Football

Momentum in contests and its underlying behavioral mechanisms

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