Confirmation bias
What?
Paul DePodesta works in the front office of the San Diego Padres baseball team. So? Well he’s a very bright and interesting man, writes a blog about his experiences at San Diego too. I liked this little nugget:
Very simply, confirmation bias describes the act of accepting only those facts that buttress a pre-existing opinion while discarding those facts that run contrary to one’s opinion. In short, we’re much more comfortable continuing to believe what we already believe.
So true. And this…
So, there we sit discussing the skills of a highly qualified and tested group where the distinction between players is very, very thin. However, what becomes clear is that for the players we want to keep in big league camp, we generally talk about what they can do. For the players we want to send down, we tend to focus on what they can’t do, so the decisions seem obvious (which they’re not). Understand, I keep using “we” because every one of us in the room is guilty – we can’t help ourselves!
I think we see a lot of this in discussions about Fulham players. This is tied into what Colin’s doing at Championship at Best. If you haven’t filled the survey in yet, go for it.
DePodesta is a really bright guy, for what it’s worth.
that’s what I was getting at when I called him a bright and interesting man, Josh ;-)
I thought the distiction between modes of evaluating were in line with the modes used by “Human Resources.” Some HRs look at candidates with the point of view of “what makes this guy a potential good match” while others search for reasons why the candidate isn’t a good fit.
either way, you tend to find reasons to back up your intial hunch about a candidate, no? One way or another.
Same goes for players. Once someone makes up their mind they look for the positives or negatives, and it seems that very rarely will someone actually change their mind. I’m trick in this regard as I do tend only to see positives in current Fulham players, which is not particularly helpful and would clearly make me a terrible manager!