title: Heuristics as beliefs and as behaviors: the adaptiveness of the "hot hand".
abstract: and analyzed reasoning by asking: what are the reasoner's goals? This emphasizes the adaptiveness of behavior rather than whether a belief is normative. Belief in the "hot hand" in basketball suggests that players experiencing streaks should be given more shots, but this has been seen as a fallacy due to failure to find dependencies between players' shots. Based on their findings, I demonstrate by Markov modeling and simulation that streaks are valid allocation cues for deciding who to give shots to, because this behavior achieves the team goal of scoring more. Empirically I show that this adaptive heuristic is supported by the fallacious belief in dependency, more so as skill level increases. I extend the theoretical analysis to identify general conditions under which following streaks should be beneficial. Overall, this approach illustrates the advantages of analyzing reasoning in terms of adaptiveness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1117, USA. burnsbr@msu.edu
authors.forename: Bruce D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Burns
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012919:Social Behavior