How regret guides fantasy football transfer strategy
The FA Cup weekend gave 9 million Fantasy Premier League players much needed rest bite from their normal anxiety- and stress-induced weekend afternoons. When John Stones went off injured – it would otherwise have been accompanied by the usual anguish: “for fuck’s sake – I only subbed him in this morning”.
Playing fantasy league can be painful. The problem is: intense emotions can impact our decision-making. And like anytime strong emotions are associated with outcomes, this can lead to sub-optimal decision strategies.
A common and intense feeling experienced by all fantasy football managers is regret. Such is the discomfort brought on by feelings of regret, we sometimes make decisions not to maximise potential outcomes, but to minimise potential regret.
It should be recognisable – for instance, when deciding whether to get travel insurance – we may rationalise our decision by thinking: ‘if something were to happen, we would really regret not having it’. It is possible that many insurance markets are propped up by our fears of regret.
Regret aversion is accounted for by prospect theory – our greater sensitivity to negative than positive events means over time we develop a tendency to avoid the prospect of regret. As with many cognitive biases, our preferences are derived from how we feel about a prospect rather than what we think about it.
Now, let’s try a thought experiment:
Research into regret aversion has investigated this important difference: when regret is consequence of action or inaction. The action-effect describes a phenomenon in which people regret actions leading to negative outcomes more than they do inactions leading to the same negative outcomes. It is considered one of the most well-known replicable findings in regret research and generalises across domains and cultures (although there are social and context-dependent effects that can impact this).
This may, therefore, be subconsciously dictating your fantasy football transfer strategy. When making decisions to minimise regret – we are biased towards not taking action rather than taking action, in the hopes that if this leads to negative outcomes, we wouldn’t feel so bad.
Now consider this:
What makes matter worse, is that this bias is compounded by other psychological tendencies motivating transfer inactivity. A manifestation of loss aversion is the endowment effect: people tend to value items that they own higher than they would if they didn't. We may psychologically value the players already in our team more than those who aren’t – even if other evidence suggests that it would be beneficial to make the transfers.
The other sticky tendency manifests from our misperception of chance and randomness. We assume because something has happened less frequently than expected over a period, it will happen more frequently in the future, or vice versa. This drives our belief that players may be ‘due’ a goal or a clean sheet. Yes, over the long-term over-/under-performance will regress to the mean, but if you’re keeping players in because they are due some points – you have fallen foul of the gambler’s fallacy.
So, how can fantasy league managers use this information. That will depend on what you want out of the game: to maximise points or to minimise feelings. If it’s the latter, then inaction is the way forward.
But if you want to maximise – here is what can you do:
We overestimate how much regret we will feel – so when potential regret is influencing our decisions, take comfort in that it won’t be as bad as you think
If it’s a starter/bench swap – make the change with enough time to renege. Come back to it later and see if you would now do the reverse
If it really is a 50/50 call – toss a coin and at least you will bypass your natural tendency for inaction
It’s worth thinking about how this may also impact Reality Premier League. Managers may be highly trained professionals compared to the rank amateurs competing against friends and colleagues in the FPL – but they are still people, with the same brains and the same biases.
How did the action-effect impact the recent Murdryk transfer saga? Consumer research shows regret experienced for purchases is greater than that felt for non-purchases. When it came to Arsenal meeting the transfer fee (slightly above their estimation) – did Arsenal’s regret aversion persuade them to opt for not signing.
Did Mikel Arteta overvalue the wingers already in Arsenal's squad and thus underestimate the requirement for a new player. On the flip side, did Shakhtar Donetsk overvalue the player they owned, and almost jeopardise what would have been a club-record transfer (before blank-cheque Boehly came to the rescue).
Does the IKEA effect – where people tend to value things more if they make it themselves – hold true for players developed through a club’s academy (as Murdryk was). And thus, put an unjustified premium on homegrown talent.
In one final twist, unlike most lab-studies investigating regret, transfer decisions are not made in isolation, but are repeated, where the outcomes of previous transfer decisions are known. Studies exploring repeated decisions have found that following negative prior experiences, inaction may result in more regret than action – a finding that the authors label the inaction effect.
With Murdryk already looking like the real deal, it will be interesting to see how these experiences and biases interact when Arsenal try to sign homeboy Declan Rice over the summer.
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