Streakiness is not a theory: On “momentums” (hot hands) and their underlying mechanisms

Elia Morgulev

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2023, vol. 96, issue C

Abstract: The term momentum (or hot hand) is widely used by researchers from various disciplines when addressing streakiness. Indeed, stock prices, presidential approval ratings, students’ grades, and basketball games outcomes might all exhibit some degree of serial correlation. Over time, serial correlation assessment has evolved into a thriving research field, and it might have become a rather technical and specific matter if not for the concept of momentum that provides this “conquest for streakiness” with some theoretical underpinning and a general appeal. In this paper, we distinguish between within-contest, across-contest, and other types of serial dependencies. We also elaborate on the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the within-contest success breeds success effect. We then bridge between literature on goal setting, high performance cycle, and momentum, as a means for addressing across-contest dependency in performance. Finally, we emphasize that the underlying mechanisms of the within-contest and across-contest success breeds success effect cannot readily explain serial correlation in other spheres. We therefore encourage researchers to go beyond simply labeling their researched phenomenon as momentum (or hot hand), instead developing more specific models and descriptions of the underlying mechanisms.

Keywords: Momentum; Hot hand; Winner effect; High performance cycle; Goal setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000284
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:96:y:2023:i:c:s0167487023000284

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2023.102627

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().