Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Psychological momentum (PM) and the hot hand are relatedconcepts describing people’s beliefs regarding streaks ofsuperior performance. This study examined the susceptibilityof perceptions of PM to changes in the streakiness ofotherwise equivalent series. Fifty-five male participants (31basketballers and 24 control) completed a ‘hot-cognition’experiment where they rated individual and team momentumand assessed the likelihood of a future shot’s success afterwatching sequences of basketball shots. The experimentalmanipulation of the order of shots strongly affectedparticipants’ ratings of momentum and, less strongly, theprobability they assigned to the future shot (i.e. the hot handeffect). Basketballers showed stronger reactions tomanipulations of order than the controls, which could beattributed to greater investment in the task. The resultsdemonstrate the importance of distinguishing between PMand the hot hand and also provide a valuable extension ofprior work showing such effects into more realistic scenarios.