DIRECTIONS
The process of filling out an NCAA bracket, as well as the accompanying cognitive processes displayed by bracket pool participants, serves as an interesting opportunity to observe a number of the concepts we covered during our discussions of perception and decision making. As such, your task for this assignment is to think about how some of these concepts are at play in this context.
Specifically, pick 5 of the concepts below, describe the conflict, and explain how each might come into play when someone takes on the task of making bracket predictions or predicting the likelihood of their bracket’s success:
Self-serving bias Halo effect/horns effect
Rational decision-making model Contrast effect
Bounded rationality Intuition
Overconfidence bias Confirmation bias
Availability bias Escalation of commitment
Randomness error Risk aversion
Hindsight bias Anchoring bias
Fundamental attribution error
The submission should include 1-2 paragraphs for each concept and be around 3 pages, double spaced. Use times new roman font, 1-inch margins, and add a heading with the name of the bias you are examining before the relevant paragraph(s) for that bias to help organize your paper. For each of the 5 concepts you pick, do the following:
-Provide a brief “in your own words” explanation of the concept and how it factors into perception or decision-making processes.
-Explain how this concept could be a factor in the way a person makes bracket predictions and/or thinks about the likelihood of their bracket’s success. In other words, how can this bias or thinking error affect a person’s bracket decisions?
BACKGROUND
You don’t need to know anything about basketball to be successful on this assignment, but I’m providing some resources for those who feel the assignment would be easier with a little more information.
According to ESPN, forty million Americans (approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.) fill out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket. People who fill out brackets employ a wide variety of strategies for choosing their game-winners. Bracket pool participants also vary widely with regard to the amount of time and effort they spend making their predictions, the level of confidence they have about the likely success of those predictions, and the degree to which they are invested in the ultimate performance of their brackets. I suggest looking them over, even if you regularly create your own brackets.
The following links provide some basic background regarding the NCAA tournament and how brackets work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Madness_pools (Links to an external site.)
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/2019-03-18/what-march-madness-ncaa-tournament-explained (Links to an external site.)
This second set of links gives examples of ‘expert’ recommendations for prediction strategies (don’t feel the need to absorb every detail of each of these – they’re just provided to illustrate the idea that people take very different approaches to this process):
https://www.theringer.com/2019/3/18/18270554/ncaa-tournament-bracket-tips (Links to an external site.)
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/ncaa-bracket-advice-10-tips-and-strategies-to-help-the-casual-fan-win-their-march-madness-pool/ (Links to an external site.)
https://www.sbnation.com/college-basketball/2019/3/19/18271165/how-to-fill-out-ncaa-tournament-bracket (Links to an external site.)
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