Behavioral Biases in Competition: Evidence from Pga Tour Match Play

Abstract

The examination of behavioral biases has become increasingly popular and sports, in particular, provide a unique setting to study these biases. Several recent studies have used golf to examine behavioral issues ranging from loss aversion (Pope and Schweitzer 2011, Stone and Arkes 2016), to performance under pressure (Hickman and Metz 2015), and confidence (Rosenqvist and Skans 2015). This study uses PGA Tour ShotLink data to further examine the issue of loss aversion in the case of direct competition against another player, in the form of a match play tournament. We focus on the task of putting, and examine whether the performance of a player is affected by his standing (relative to his opponent) for both the current hole and the match overall. We find evidence that loss aversion bias is substantial in the match play setting, as player performance increases when in a losing position. The detailed nature of the data also makes it possible for us to examine how uncertainty in an opponent’s performance impacts one’s own performance.