Golfers: Want to putt like a champion? It’ll help if you use a champion’s putter. That’s the key finding of a study published in the online journal PLoS One, which finds the “positive contagion” of a piece of sports equipment can substantially improve a player’s performance. Forty-one undergraduates — all experienced golfers — took part in an experiment conducted by a research team led by University of Virginia psychologist Charles Lee. They were taken to an artificial putting mat, which was designed to mimic the speed of greens professional golfers play on. Half the ... Read More
An Unforgettable World Series? Only If Your Team Wins
October 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Fans of the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals will be anxiously following every inning of baseball during this year’s World Series. But how much will they remember about the key games five or six years from now? New research suggests it largely depends upon on whether their team won or lost. A study just published in the journal Psychological Science contradicts the notion we have sharper memories of negative events. Catholic University psychologists Carolyn Breslin and Martin Safer found fans of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox more accurately recalled key playoff games in ... Read More
New Sports Therapy Redefines the Body’s Core
October 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Alexandra Stevenson has been holding a tennis racket ever since she can remember. The decision to go pro at 18 took her from the relative comfort of a scholarship offer at UCLA and thrust her into the pressure cooker of competition. It also exposed her body to the kind of beating that mere mortals can only dream about. Having suffered a number of injury-related setbacks over the ensuing years, Stevenson thought her career was through by 2010. But then, something changed. After being carried off a Sydney court with a foot injury in February of last year, she decided to try a new kind of ... Read More
A Tradition of Choking Under Pressure in Sports
September 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In poignantly predictable baseball news, the Chicago Cubs have once again failed to reach the postseason. Some fans speak of the team as being cursed, while others dismiss that notion as an excuse for poor play or bad management. After all, they ask, why would the failure of one group of guys in, say, 1969 (when they famously collapsed in September) or 1984 (when they just missed becoming National League champions) have any impact on an entirely different group of players in 2011? Well, a new study of soccer tournaments finds a team’s history of failure can hurt the performances of ... Read More
Men in Black Spend More Time in Hockey’s Penalty Box
September 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In an old cinematic Western, you can tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their respective hats. If the referees’ judgment can be trusted, it appears you can make a similar snap judgment at a hockey game. The only difference is, on the ice rink, the tell-tale garments are the players’ jerseys. Analyzing penalty-minute data from the last 25 National Hockey League seasons, a trio of researchers led by University of Florida psychologist Gregory Webster found a fascinating pattern. In a paper posted online just as the NHL’s preseason gets underway, they found a correlation ... Read More
Pass Complete: Tailgating Can Spawn Drinking Habits
September 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
College football season has arrived, and many family-oriented fans will be taking their kids to a stadium this weekend. But if they robustly engage in a favorite pre-game ritual – alcohol-enhanced tailgating parties – team loyalty won’t be the only thing they’re passing down to the next generation. Newly published research links parental inebriation at these parking-lot picnics with problem drinking by their college-student offspring. The sight of Mom or Dad drunk in this school- and sports-related context seems to send an uniquely powerful message. “By perceiving their ... Read More
Three Ways Sports Fans Can Help Their Team Win
May 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Years ago, an anonymous poll of NFL players showed that many would be willing to shave years or decades off their lifespan if it meant they could win a Super Bowl. If that sounds crazy, consider this: The fans might care even more than the players. Elif Batuman recently wrote about Turkish soccer fans in The New Yorker: "The athletes are competing in play," Umberto Eco writes in an essay about soccer, "but the voyeurs compete seriously and, in fact, they beat one another or die of heart failure in the grandstands." I heard a similar view from a Carsi member. "The players only play the ... Read More
In Tax Debate, Lessons from Ronaldinho and Beckham
April 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
How high can you tax the rich before they decide to pack up and move somewhere cheaper? For states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, this is no theoretical question. Set taxes too low, and you miss out on valuable revenue — set them too high, and your powerhouse workers might move away. Now, by looking at the mobility of soccer stars in Europe, three economists say they are closer to understanding an ideal tax rate for the super-wealthy. In "Taxation and the International Migration of Superstars," Camille Landais, Emmanuel Saez and Henrik Kleven shed light on the elusive habits of ... Read More
Magical Elixirs and Beneficial Bracelets
March 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A few days ago I was walking through the local shopping mall and a salesperson staffing one of those ubiquitous kiosks approached me with an intriguing offer. He claimed I could improve my balance, brain functioning and stamina — for only $30 — by wearing a special wristband. Somehow this silicone bracelet with two “ionized holograms” harnesses our natural energy flow and restores our electrical fields, which may have become unbalanced. Really? Just ask hundreds of successful sports figures. Really. How does it work, you ask? Well, here’s the “science” behind the original ... Read More
Ray Allen Scores in the Nature-Nurture Debate
February 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Michael Jordan is the greatest player in NBA history. You see his image everywhere, eight years after he retired. He even graces the pages of the introductory psychology textbook that I use — but not because of his outlandish skills. Midway through his career, Jordan decided to switch sports and try his hand at major league baseball. Although he clearly had substantial baseball skills, he wasn't ready for the big leagues, so his foray was considered a failure. Then he switched back and resumed his reign as the king of basketball. The lesson of Jordan's career in sports is that talent ... Read More
