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.)
