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.