the behaviour file

Basketball turns out to be a surprisingly useful subject for studying other elements of human behavior and decision making. When psychologists once asked sports fans to visualize how a particular team might win a game, the volunteers became far more likely to later believe that the team would win -- and to bet money on it. Essentially, psychologist Bryan Gibson of Central Michigan University said, focusing on some part of a conundrum makes it much more difficult for people to keep in mind how much they do not know about all the other variables involved.

"Focusing on one potential outcome leads to the overestimation of the probability that this focal outcome will occur," Gibson and his colleagues concluded. "This inflated probability estimate . . . leads to a greater willingness to gamble."

Gibson has also found that gambling is one domain in which it may be wiser to have a pessimistic personality rather than an optimistic personality. Gamblers tend to be optimists in that they inherently believe good things are likely to happen to them. When a pessimist wins a bet, he is likely to walk away with his winnings because he can't believe that his lucky streak will continue.

By contrast, Gibson found in one series of experiments, optimists were far more likely to throw good money after bad because they believed that, sooner or later, things would break their way.