"Be a goldfish!"

After binge-watching the new series "Ted Lasso" on Apple TV+ last year, I couldn't wait for season 2 to start!  Last Friday night's season 2 premiere did not disappoint!  In the midst of a seven-game streak of ties, AFC Richmond striker Dani Rojas takes a penalty kick to try to win the game in the closing seconds.  Unfortunately, the team's mascot "Earl Greyhound" picks the wrong moment to try to catch a wayward pigeon and is killed by the ball (RIP Earl).  Rojas ends up with a bad case of the yips until he sees a sports psychologist, Dr. Sharon.  He summarizes it best, "Dr. Sharon helped me remember that even though football is life, football is also death.  And that football is football too.  But mostly that football is life!"  Classic.  And my new favorite show!

I took a class in college called "The Psychology of Sports" and never once heard the term yips.  Apparently, the term is widely accepted and refers to the sudden and unexplained loss of skills by an experienced athlete.  The term was originally coined by the professional golfer, Tommy Armour, known in the 1930's as "The Silver Scot" and winner of the 1927 U.S. Open, 1930 PGA, and 1931 Open Championship.  Armour claims that he left the professional golf circuit as a result of this condition, which has also been described by golfers by the terms, twitches, staggers, jitters, and jerks. Surprisingly, the yips affects anywhere from a quarter to half of all mature golfers - and the longer you play, the more likely you are to suffer from the yips.  The yips have been described in other sports too (in professional darts, it's called dartitis).  You've probably heard of the term choking in sports like basketball (e.g., when players miss an important free throw), American football (e.g., when place kickers miss the game-winning or game-tying field goal), and even soccer/football (e.g., when a player misses a penalty kick).  It sounds like "choking", "dartitis", and the "yips" are all related!

As it turns out, psychologists love to study why athletes, particularly professional athletes, "choke under pressure".  In order to continue this discussion, I need to define a couple of terms.  First, loss aversion was originally described by the cognitive psychologists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman and refers to the simple concept that individuals prefer to avoid losses rather than acquiring equivalent gains.  In other words, we hate to lose more than we love to win!  

Second, the endowment effect is related to loss aversion and refers to the tendency that people would rather keep something that they own as opposed to acquiring (by either purchasing or receiving as a gift or reward) that same item when they do not own it.  We tend to place a higher value on items that we already have in our possession (think of the concept of "sentimental value" when you are selling something at a garage sale).  For further explanation on both loss aversion and the endowment effect, see my post "The only person who likes change is a wet baby!".  

Finally, both loss aversion and the endowment effect are critically important to Tversky and Kahneman's Prospect Theory, which explains why people are so bad at making decisions at times.  According to this theory, we generally over-weight both low and high probabilities and under-weight medium probabilities.    

Now, back to sports!  Investigators in a now classic study ("Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse?") analyzed over 2.5 million putts by professional golfers on the PGA Tour - the investigators specifically compared the putts golfers attempted for par (the typical number of shots a golfer takes to complete a hole) versus putts golfers attempted for a score different from par (a birdie, which is one shot better than par or a bogie, which is one shot worse than par).  They found that when putting for a score better than par (a birdie or better), golfers are significantly less accurate and are more likely to miss their putt compared to when they are shooting for worse than par (a bogie or worse).  In other words, the way that professionals approach putting is consistent with the concept of loss aversion and the endowment effect  Even the best golfers (e.g. Tiger Woods) succumb to this loss aversion.

Human performance under pressure is a complex topic.  At the end of the day, most, if not all of us are loss averse.  And, probably related to that fact, we are all at risk of the yips.  If you do happen to develop a case of the yips and fail on some big task, it's good to remember that Ted Lasso is in your corner!  As he told one of his football players, "You know what the happiest animal in the world is?  It's a goldfish.  It's got a 10 second memory.  Be a goldfish."  In other words, learn from your mistake.  Put the past behind you.  Move on.