Why is it so hard to define value in fantasy sports?

In one of my neuroscience courses I teach about the ethics of using fMRI scanning for neuromarketing purposes--essentially, should it be allowable for companies to "read your mind" in order to develop more effective business and sales plans for their products? Invariably the very famous Coke vs Pepsi study comes up, where the surprising finding is that brand knowledge substantially affects behavior (taste preference) and brain activity in reward-responsive regions. Some people who say they prefer Pepsi in blind experiments say they prefer Coke in brand-cued experiments, and their brain's reward centers are actually more active in the brand-cued condition! Thus, cultural information and perceptions--that red label--influence brain activity in a way that modifies our innate behavior. For those of us that prefer a different kind of drink, the same type of results have been found in wine or beer experiments where participants taste the same exact beverage twice, but in one case are told it is cheap, and in the other case, expensive. The "expensive" alcoholic beverages are always rated as more pleasant and invoke higher activation of reward centers in the brain despite participants actually tasting the exact same drink. Both of these examples demonstrate that something we think we know--our own tastes!--are easily overridden by external information.

Let me give two other examples of how our valuation mechanisms fail us. I recall this story from a few years ago about one of the world's best concert violinists, Joshua Bell, playing incognito for 45 minutes in a Washington DC metro station as part of a social science experiment reported here. Bell attracted no audience as he played some of the most famous classical music pieces on a multi-million dollar violin, and collected about $30 from hurried passersby. Two nights earlier, he had sold out the Boston Symphony to the tune of about $100/seat. 

More recently, I came across this piece describing a day that the famous British artist, Bansky, gave a homeless man over $225,000 worth of his paintings to sell in Central Park. The man sold eight paintings and cleared just $420. Once again, expectations and limited imaginations about what might be possible clouded value judgments. I'm assuming here that most of the people that encountered these artistic geniuses unexpectedly would have swooned with appreciation had they been paying customers at the Boston Symphony or at one of Bansky's NYC shows. The fact that they had been asked to pay a high price to experience the music or art would have primed them to appreciate its intrinsic value. Without the "label" they merely heard violin music and saw some black and white spray paint. 

Determining accurate fantasy value of football players is critical to our success, not just on draft day but all season long. Yet the examples above suggest that we're flat out terrible at assessing value. What constitutes value in fantasy football is how many fantasy points is he going to get us in any given week. That depends on talent and opportunity, right? Talent evaluations are usually reliable, but don't always translate to performance on the real or the fake gridiron. Matchup analysis is seemingly an important piece of value, allowing us to increase our perceived value of players who may be poised to exploit an opponent's weakness. Yet "matchup plays" fail as often as they succeed. The rotoViz GLSP tool combines these two research approaches to give you the most accurate and scientifically sound range of projections out there.  

Despite unbiased tools like GLSP, we can still make poor value judgments when it comes to trades and lineup or add/drop decisions. The most accurate experts are 60% correct, which shows just how hard it is to assign value in fantasy football. A few factors seem to affect our valuation, and one of my big beliefs is that once you understand how your brain is manipulating you, you can snatch back some logical control of your decisions. As I wrote about last week, the marketplace in your brain cares less about what you want and need, and more about avoiding regret. We make buying (or usage) decisions in part for the rewards they might bring, but fMRI studies indicate that the larger part of our decisions stems from avoiding activation of pain centers in the brain that respond to loss and failure, in addition to physical pain. I wonder if the extent to which this balance tips in one direction or the other correlates to personality traits like optimism and pessimism. 

We also fall prey to the Endowment Effect, which I've written about in my book. It says that we demand more to give up something we have than we are willing to spend to acquire it. In other words, what we already have is more valuable to us, just because we have it. Having invested in something changes its innate value as perceived by us. Consider your car, all the great trips it's taken you on, all the memories that it was involved in, then check it's KBB value. There's usually a little disappointment there...kinda like having Tom Brady on your team this year. 

Then there is cultural effect. If one, two, then three, four people had stopped in that metro station to listen to Joshua Bell more would have joined them and soon a large crowd would have gathered to see what was attracting all the attention. Sooner or later, someone probably would have realized who they were listening to. The point of the Washington DC study was to show us how tuned out to the world around us we are, and how many things of beauty and worth probably pass us by unnoticed. My point is that we often act like sheep following the hype to its source or hurrying on by the value right in front of our faces. What others do or deem important becomes suddenly more significant to us. The fantasy player that everyone is talking about instigates a frenzy of activity that no one wants to be left out of. Almost no one, I mean. There are the contrarians who run the other way when they see the hype train coming. If everyone else wants something it immediately loses its value to them. This is a bias too. Neither is helping you to make a logical or accurate value judgment.

As a scientist, I want value to be a fixed thing. Realizing that it just isn't, and understanding the reasons why it isn't is the first step toward improving our assessment ability. Use the projections, factor in your own needs--a lot of value judgments stem from your team construction and current status, and evaluate the arguments behind the crowd behavior whether they're flocking to a guy or running away from one. The more expensive beer really is better tasting. Putting an expensive label on the cheap beer doesn't make it taste better even if everyone else at the party is telling you it does. As always, use your brain, don't let your brain use you!

Neuroeconomics and Fantasy Football: The Fear of Regret

It's got mountains, it's got rivers, it's got sights to make you shiver...You're gonna miss me when I'm gone, when I'm gone, you're gonna miss me when I'm gone (Anna Kendrick, Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm gone")). It turned into the theme song for an 1800 mile road trip I took this summer with my two boys, 9 and 11. It was pretty catchy too, until the 673rd time we heard it traveling from upstate New York to North Carolina and everywhere worth seeing in between.

It might also be the theme song for the new field of Neuroeconomics. Scientists recently discovered that what drives consumer behavior is not only a desire to get what we want, but a fear of losing out on something worth having. In fact, the fear of missing out on or giving up on a product or commodity too soon looks like the most powerful predictor of bidding at an experimental auction. Let that sink in: More important than how much we like something, how much we need something, how much we are drawn toward it, what drives our actual behavior is the avoidance of regret.

The most dreaded words in the English language are "I should have" or "I shouldn't have"? We all know the emotional pain and regret that comes when we have to own up to having made the wrong choice. Yes, it is something you want to avoid! You stay in a relationship long after the love is gone, hold a stock that is steadily dropping, and you're still starting Dwayne Bowe or Larry Fitzgerald on your fantasy team. In all these situations, there was once true value and the potential for future greatness was certainly there. It's when the current value doesn't match the expected value that we're faced with tough decisions. A) We can admit we were wrong and move on, cutting our losses, starting over, acknowledging and healing the wounds. We find a new source of hope. Or B) we can hang on, stick with it, praying that value will return and that the best is still ahead. We acknowledge that we had a good reason for picking the partner, stock, WR, whatever that isn't living up to our expectations and are unable to let them go for fear of missing out on the greatest performance yet to come.

So what do you do with your Bowe, Ray Rice, Fitzgerald, Hakeem Nicks, Doug Martin, CJ.2K, etc? What about you 2QB leaguers stuck with Eli, Vick, or Kaepernick? The higher the expectations (read auction price or draft pick you used on them) the harder it is to bench or cut these guys.
First, you don't want to admit you were wrong about them; that activates parts of the brain that signal pain, called the insula and cingulate cortex. These are ancient, highly conserved neural networks that evolved to hone our ability to detect and avoid painful stimuli. Interestingly, the human brain responds to emotional pain, such as being wrong, being excluded, being criticized or put down, exactly like it responds to physical pain. It's a powerful system for motivating behavior.

Second, you don't want to risk anyone else reaping the rewards of your guy if you do cut him. You're afraid that as soon as you drop Martin, he'll be rushing for 130 yards and a score every week, taking someone else to your fantasy playoffs. You can just hear Doug {or insert your personal fantasy let down players here} singing in your ear, "you're gonna miss me when I'm gone...".

But will you miss him, really? Is the fear worse than the reality? Neuroeconomics helps us understand what neural patterns drive value-based consumer decisions. Can knowing that it is the fear of regret that drives our behavior at least as much, if not more than reward seeking help us make better fantasy decisions? For me, the balance is tipping more toward being afraid of regretting leaving unproductive players in my lineups next week.