title: Beliefs about the "hot hand" in basketball across the adult life span.
abstract: Many people believe in streaks. In basketball, belief in the "hot hand" occurs when people think a player is more likely to make a shot if they have made previous shots. However, research has shown that players' successive shots are independent events. To determine how age would impact belief in the hot hand, we examined this effect across the adult life span. Older adults were more likely to believe in the hot hand, relative to younger and middle-aged adults, suggesting that older adults use heuristics and potentially adaptive processing based on highly accessible information to predict future events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. castel@ucla.edu
authors.forename: Alan D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Castel
authors.forename: Aimee Drolet
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.forename: Shannon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McGillivray
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001490:Basketball; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011336:Probability