How betting are affected by confirmation bias cricket betting
- Definition of information overload
- What instances could affect your betting
- Are you a confirmation bias victim?
Can you recall the time that you wanted to place a bet for a specific team, but before betting found out some information and therefore changed your decision to place a bet on the opposition team? If this is not your practice, you may be one of the confirmation bias victims. This phenomenon could be bad for your betting.
Confirmation bias is a theory when a bettor’s preference is more inclined to what they already know, and they are reluctant to alter their decision even though there is new evidence that surface. These types of bettors will not use the new information to objectively analyse it, but they will continue to focus only on specific resources – usually the existing ones.
Without a doubt, this is definitely not favourable to bettors because being subjective in the betting arena would affect the prediction of an event. Therefore, what are the steps to take to avoid our habitual confirmation bias?
Overload of information
Google can illustrate the confirmation bias’s influence. Select one out of three conspiracy theories which you do not agree:-
- Insider job for 9/11
- Area 51 is keeping aliens
- Moon landing was fake
In any selections, you have made, search the topic in Google and you will receive various results that logically debate the topic. For the result in searches regarding moon landing, a link stated 100% evidence that we did not land on the moon. As for the searches regarding Area 51, there are countless results that suggest that Area 51 may contain aliens. As for the searches of 9/11, various links suggested that it is definitely an insider job.
The test here is that even though there are millions of articles suggesting different views regarding the topic, chances are, you did not change your opinion on your view. For instance, there are almost 32 million search results by searching 9/11 conspiracy theory but it could hardly change one’s initial opinion about the matter.
This will similarly happen while researching during betting. The bettors’ existing belief will be reinforced by the new information they found, but usually ignored if they are counteractive evidence. One of the examples is the perception of Brazil as a strong team, even though they have just won 54.3% out of their 36 games before the Confederations Cup in 2013.
This is also similar in the stock market industry. A study in 2010, Park et al found that stock market investors search for information regarding a specific stock that they are interested in. Those investors that had the highest confirmation bias profit less.
This is also applicable when we are tracking our betting performance. This is because we tend to be biased towards our own performance as we will be more likely to remember winnings than losses.
What is the method in avoiding confirmation bias
In order to avoid confirmation bias, all information must be logically and objectively evaluated. Although it is that simple, it is usually not practice as we can see in the aforementioned examples.
Theoretically, being 100% objective would be the most ideal – but it is impossible to achieve in reality. However, one could improve in their performance if they could digest information that is against their own belief and make an informed decision.
