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Carpe diem: winner and loser effects are constrained to same-day competitions in collegiate baseball

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Abstract

Competitive outcomes can be significantly influenced by previous experience of winning and losing, whereby all things considered, winners are likely to continue winning and losers are likely to keep losing. Although short-lived, the underlying hormonal changes associated with these effects have been observed into the following day. Here, we assess the functional persistence of winner and loser effects in college baseball by investigating outcomes (splits vs. sweeps) of multigame series played over one or more days. Results show that sweeps occur at disproportionately higher frequencies in single-day series, but drop off to expected levels for multiday series.

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Fig. 1

Data availability

The data sets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available at https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cnso_bio_datasets/3/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the J. Tartar, J. Antonio, and the rest of the Neurosports team, as well as J. Thomas, C. Algieri, and T. Hazelhurtst for the helpful insights and discussions.

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Correspondence to Omar Tonsi Eldakar.

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Eldakar, O.T., Buckwold, N. & Gallup, A.C. Carpe diem: winner and loser effects are constrained to same-day competitions in collegiate baseball. J Ethol 40, 97–101 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-021-00728-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-021-00728-9

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