Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Social Sciences Seminar

Abstract: This paper uses a dataset generated in a sports bar where fans watched two NFL playoff games on December 2013 and January 2014 to investigate how spectators choose non-instrumental beliefs to help them regulate their emotional reaction to the exogenous events of the game. By comparing the beliefs set by our spectators to the "rational beliefs" of Pro Football Reference (PFR), a company who sets winning probabilities in real time during such games, we find that fans who set their beliefs closest to the PFR beliefs enjoyed the game less than those who allowed themselves to deviate. In the process of doing our analysis we provide a theory of optimal belief setting which is applicable to other contexts such as the beliefs that medical patients might set while awaiting the results of a sequence of medical tests about their diagnosis or voters choosing beliefs about the viability of their candidate as new poll data arrives.

Written with Ruchi Avtar