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The hot hand fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness?

Memory & Cognition volume 32, pages 1369–1378 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

The representativeness heuristic has been invoked to explain two opposing expectations—that random sequences will exhibit positive recency (the hot hand fallacy) and that they will exhibit negative recency (the gambler’s fallacy). We propose alternative accounts for these two expectations: (1) The hot hand fallacy arises from the experience of characteristic positive recency in serial fluctuations in human performance. (2) The gambler’s fallacy results from the experience of characteristic negative recency in sequences of natural events, akin to sampling without replacement. Experiment 1 demonstrates negative recency in subjects’ expectations for random binary outcomes from a roulette game, simultaneously with positive recency in expectations for another statistically identical sequence—the successes and failures of their predictions for the random outcomes. These findings fit our proposal but are problematic for the representativeness account. Experiment 2 demonstrates that sequence recency influences attributions that human performance or chance generated the sequence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Ilan Fischer

  2. Department of Psychology, City University, EC1V 0HB, London, England

    Peter Ayton

Authors
  1. Peter Ayton
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  2. Ilan Fischer
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Correspondence to Peter Ayton or Ilan Fischer.

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Ayton, P., Fischer, I. The hot hand fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness?. Memory & Cognition 32, 1369–1378 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206327

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206327

Keywords

  • Roulette Wheel
  • Eyeblink Conditioning
  • Alternation Rate
  • Probability Learning
  • Eyeblink Response