Rational and Irrational Belief in the Hot Hand: Evidence from "Jeopardy!"

Anthony J. Kukavica and Sridhar Narayanan
Additional contact information
Anthony J. Kukavica: Stanford U
Sridhar Narayanan: Stanford U

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: For several decades, researchers and practitioners have wondered whether a “hot hand†exists in domains with repeated, human-controlled trials. Using a comprehensive play-by-play dataset from the game show “Jeopardy!†, we demonstrate that contestants strongly believe in a hot hand effect as reflected in their wagering decisions during gameplay. In parallel, we find that a small hot hand effect also exists in contestants’ actual performances. We then quantify contestants’ “hot hand bias†(the degree to which their belief is irrational), finding that they overestimate the true effect by up to an order of magnitude. We also find that more successful contestants, as well as those with more quantitative and analytical training, exhibit lower levels of bias. Our paper reconciles robust findings of belief in a hot hand with a growing consensus that a small effect often exists in reality and investigates foundational mechanisms underlying these effects.

JEL-codes: D84 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/work ... nd-evidence-jeopardy

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:ecl:stabus:4229

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().