Thesis Proposal (set 3: motivation2)

The argument could be made that coaches' decisions have the largest impact on game outcomes. At the very least, most people would agree that the coaches and their decisions would rank pretty high on the list, especially in key moments and high-pressure situations. An example of a situation like this in football is when a coach must make the decision of whether to kick or go-for-it on fourth down. This is the decision-making process that I will be evaluating.

I will be finding out whether or not coaches in the National Football League succumb to a subconscious psychological bias when making decisions. This bias is called the representativeness heuristic. So what is the representativeness heuristic? It's part of Prospect Theory, which in short, explains why people make the decisions that they do. Prospect Theory is comprised of four well-established psychological biases (or heuristics) and the representativeness heuristic focuses on people overweighting new information relative to prior information.

A very simplified example of this is if somebody tells me they are going to flip a coin 10 times and have me make a guess before each flip and no matter what I guess they flip heads. It might be after three heads in a row or five, but eventually I will just start guessing heads. I knew going into it that the probability of a coin landing on heads was 0.5 but the new information made me biased toward picking heads. This is the bias that I will be focusing on.

That example illustrates the representativeness heuristic on a conscious level. I KNEW that I decided to start picking heads because of the recent turn of events. That's why I used it as an example, because with it being on a conscious level, it's something people can easily relate to, but it reflects what happens on a subconscious level all the time, and it regularly impacts the decisions that people make on a daily basis without them even realizing it.

This research will be useful for general managers' evaluations because if general managers and other high-level decision-makers are more aware of this bias then it could aid them in their decisions when choosing to hire and/or fire a coach. Beyond just general managers and high-level decision-makers, representativeness impacts everybody so if HR people are made aware of these issues it could help them as well, because coaches and players are employees too.

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