Last night I got a beer at an Irish bar on 43d Street and, after watching the Texas Rangers jump to a 10-5 lead over the Yankees in the 7th inning (I’m a Yankee hater), boarded a 10:12 train out of New York City for the Hudson Valley.
The train stopped at Yankee Stadium at about 10:30. A lot of Yankees fans got on board. It was the 8th inning. They’d given up on their team and were going home.
Twenty minutes later a guy on a radio looked up and said it was now 10-9. The astonishing Yankees were rallying in the bottom of the ninth. Two men on, nobody out.
Well you’ve never seen such a sick expression as the look on the Yankee fans faces. You’d think they’d be happy. A couple groaned. They all looked down in embarrassment.
A few seconds later the kid with the radio announced that a double play had ended the game, the Yankees had fallen short.
Joy in Mudville. A great weight left the fans’ shoulders. They looked about at one another with relief, and pride that they had made the right decision to leave.
This is for me a prime instance of people pulling against their own real interest out of a psychological motivation. In this case, the fans had gambled that the Yankees would not come back; and they left the game having discounted the loss against their love of the Yankees. The fact that the Yankees did come back exposed their lack of faith and pusillanimity as fans–and made them feel lousy that they had chosen to miss the opportunity for a historic comeback. Having discounted the loss, they felt a lot better when the comeback fell short. Imagine their distress if they had had to read in the next day’s papers about a legendary comeback.
(I’ve noticed a similar paradox in myself when I go into my wallet to get a dollar bill to buy something on the street and have to hunt through the 20′s and 5′s to find a single. Please be a single, I’m saying to myself as I flip the notes. I don’t want to have to get change. So I am actively pulling against my own financial interest out of a psychological need, in this case to make a transaction go smoothly.)
The fans left because they did not want to watch their team get defeated; they left to avoid watching what seemed probable. And so, why not go home a bit early since they had to get up and work the next day, a bit more time to sleep off the defeat of their
team, a part of their identity. If there’s some more psychological or practical need met by their actions, I’d like to hear it. And I’m not sure Phil’s hunting for a one dollar bill is anything but the practical notion that if you don’t have to break a higher bill you retain
better memory control of how much you have in your pocket. Who doesn’t try to use
lesser bills in his or her wallet or purse first unless really in a rush to leave the store, stand, or dispenser machine? Nobody, unless they actually want to break down a larger bill for other uses.
I think this is a wise piece. (Citizen, my friend, you’re justifying, which is different from observing.) It resonates on a number of levels, not the least of which is how people calculate, honor, and acknowledge their reality.
That’s regret aversion from the behavioral finance literature.
Great post, Phil, and an astute analogy. I’ve been-there-done-that: my team’s been down five runs in the 7th, might as well beat the traffic, avoid the indignity of watching the final out and the other team high-five each other . . . only to hear a comeback mounted on the radio after I’ve left the stadium. The worst-case scenario would be going to work the next day and having a co-worker say, “Dude, that was some game you went to yesterday, best game of the season. What a comeback.” And then I’m forced to admit that I disloyally abandoned my team when they needed me, and missed the most exciting part of the game. It’s a mondo-psychology, if you will, rooting for your team NOT to win after you’ve left the stadium.
“I told you so” is a difficult sentiment to give up.
great comments, thanks folks. appreciated.
regret aversion reminds me of the avoidance symdrome where pilots crash their planes rather than going thru the anxiety of going into battle and maybe crashing later