An Examination of Decision-Making Biases on Fourth Down in the National Football League
An Examination of Decision-Making Biases on Fourth Down in The National Football League Weller Ross, B.S. Sport Management Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Applied Health Sciences (Sport Management) Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Brock University St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada c September 2016 Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the loving memory of my uncle, David Ross, who passed away on April 14, 2016. Uncle David contributed to the field of sport management for 45 years, dating back to when he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee and his master's degree from Ohio University. He went on to have an extremely impressive career in arena management, which included serving as the president of the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) and being accorded the industry's most prestigious honor, the Charles A. McElravy Award, which signifies extraordinary contributions to the field. Most importantly, David was a loving uncle and a great mentor. We love you, Uncle David. You will be missed. Abstract The recent developments in the field of sport analytics have given researchers the tools to exam- ine an increasingly diverse set of topics within the world of sport in ways not previously possible (Alamar, 2013; Fry and Ohlmann, 2012). This study analyzes the decision-making processes of high level coaches under different contexts and then determines whether or not a specific subconscious psychological bias, known as the representativeness heuristic, caused the individual to make the choice they did. Past empirical research has examined people's decisions in different contexts and, from those con- texts, made inferences about how those individuals made their decisions and what errors in their decision-making processes could have led to their suboptimal choices (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Kobberling and Wakker, 2005; Tom et al, 2007; Tversky and Kahneman, 1992).
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