Chance News 63

Tiger’s effect on opponents

“Superstar Effect”
by Jonah Lehrer, The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2010

Lehrer, author of How We Decide[1], states:

While challenging competitions are supposed to bring out our best, … studies demonstrate that when people are forced to compete against a peer who seems far superior, they often don't rise to the challenge. Instead, they give up.

The article is based, for the most part, on the paper “Quitters Never Win: The (Adverse) Incentive Effects of Competing with Superstars”, by Jennifer Brown, Northwestern University, September 2008. The paper includes detailed descriptive and inferential statistics.

Brown chose to study golf mainly because of the presence of Tiger Woods, whose playing dominates the game. She looked at data from professional golfers and found that the presence of Tiger Woods in a tournament resulted in the other golfers, taking, on average, 0.2 more strokes in the initial 18 holes and 0.8 more strokes in the whole tournament. (Note that Lehrer cites the figure 0.3 instead of Brown’s figure, 0.2[2].)
Brown’s results apply to a field called economic tournament theory that investigates competitions in which relative, instead of absolute, performance is rewarded. She feels that the superstar effect is strongest when “there is a nonlinear incentive structure,” that is, when there is an extra incentive to finish first.
Lehrer also refers to a 2009 study[3] by University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, who examined “choking” during golf competitions[4], possibly due to golfers over-thinking their actions.

We bring expert golfers into our lab, we tell them to pay attention to a particular part of their swing, and they just screw up. …When you are at a high level, your skills become somewhat automated. You don't need to pay attention to every step in what you're doing. ….

Lehrer concludes:

Regardless of the precise explanation for the superstar effect—are golfers quitting on themselves or thinking too much?

A blogger commented[5]:

But even the best do not intimidate every opponent. Ali did not intimidate Frazier, Federer did not intimidate Nadal (in fact it was the other way around until Nadal was weakened by injuries). Even Michael Jordan wasn't intimidating when he played without Scottie Pippen.

Submitted by Margaret Cibes