
The Tiger Woods Effect: Paralysis by Analysis - cwan
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/11/the_tiger_woods_effect.php
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raphar
I prefer the original article at the The Observer. It describes how you can
focus (or refocus when you are already in a self-councious state).

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/26/sports-
psycholog...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/26/sports-psychology-
choking)

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dnewcome
Thank you for posting this related link. I remember reading it a while back
and wanted to find it, but it was not in my notes anywhere.

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idoh
This could have a completely rational explanation: If you find yourself
overmatched, then it pays to take risks.

If I found myself playing golf against Tiger Woods, I'd try higher risk /
higher reward shots, because if I stick to my typical game I'm surely going to
lose. This would make my score worse on average, but who cares about that when
once in a while the bet pays off and I win?

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Dove
Indeed. This part constitutes the science: "When the superstar entered a
tournament, every other golfer took, on average, 0.8 more strokes." The rest
is speculation.

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neilc
In fact, even that phrasing is slightly misleading, because it suggests
causality -- I suspect the evidence only supports correlation.

The article is a particularly idiotic example of uninformed speculation
passing for science journalism.

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tcskeptic
Tony Schwartz talks about some of the things that seperates elite performers
from the merely very good in his book The Power of Full Engagement (HBR
article here: [http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2001/01/the-making-of-a-
corpo...](http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2001/01/the-making-of-a-corporate-
athlete/ar/1) ) One of the points he makes is that the very elite (he studied
tennis players particularly) have rituals that they perform that allow them to
reocover, refocus, and rest very efficiently. And that the more often an
athlete stretches themselves physically or mentally beyond their own limits
and relies on these rituals to help them succeed, the more powerful and
effective the rituals become. So even without accounting for players changing
their own playing style because of Tiger, they may suffer from impaired
performance because they are simply not as practiced at performing at a high
level within the crazy media and fan circus that surrounds Tiger Woods as
Tiger Woods himself is. He clearly has developed and repeatedly stressed and
practiced those rituals of performance within that environment far more than
any one else has had chance to.

Schwartz goes on to relate this to performance as a "Corporate Athlete" but
his tips have far more applicability in my mind to the startup environment
than to the typical corporate environment.

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wisty
Good golfers take risks. When Tiger Woods starts playing, they stop taking
risks, so they end up being worse golfers.

That's another explanation.

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joe_the_user
Wow, this give an experimental basis to the distinction between "conscious
competence" and "unconscious competence".

The thing I would be very curious about is whether other activities have the
same dynamic or rather, in what activities is "thinking" more necessary in
even when one achieves competence?

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antimora
Btw, I highly recommend the author's (Jonah Lehrer) book "How We Decide". It's
well written and informative.

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amichail
Wouldn't players want Woods to win all the time as this brings more money to
their sport -- and probably also to them individually?

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bmj
You don't spend much time around athletes, do you? Athletes compete because
they want to do well. Certainly, only a few at one time have a realistic
chance of actually winning, but I reckon that most don't want one person/team
to win continually.

This is easiest to see in US football and baseball leagues--the fans and the
league prefer some degree of parity so a single team doesn't dominate the
sport.

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jackzombie
While I agree that most people don't want one person/team winning all the
time, I believe that this does generate more interest, ie. Many people will
take a vested interest in a baseball game so that they can cheer against the
Yankees.

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gloob
Cheering against the Yankees would be a waste of time if the Yankees literally
won all the time. It would increase people's interest in the game the same way
that a trick coin increases people's interest in betting on coin flips.

