← all facts
patterns
You see patterns in random data that simply do not exist.
The 1985 Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky study focused on basketball shooting performance, but utilized the known psychological tendency to misperceive random sequences (like those in coin flips) to explain why fans and players mistakenly perceive a 'hot hand'.
The study analyzed basketball shots to illustrate the 'clustering illusion' rather than conducting an empirical coin-flipping test.
You often interpret noise as a signal just to make sense of the world.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky (1985), Cognitive Psychology
- What the check found
- The 1985 study is the correct source for the theory, but the claim misrepresents the primary empirical subject of the paper, which was basketball performance, not a coin-flipping experiment.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.