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COPYRIGHT 2006 University of South Alabama
In several studies concerning professional and amateur baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey, home teams have been found to win more often than visiting teams, with the likelihood of home team victories ranging from 53% to 64% (Coumeya & Carron, 1992; Cox, 1985; Edwards, 1979; Schwartz & Barsky, 1977; Varca, 1980). Various reasons have been offered for this home advantage, including: regime regularity, field familiarity, player-venue matching, officiating bias, and crowd support (see, e.g., Wright & House, 1989).
Interestingly, in 1984, Baumeister and Steinhilber suggested that the latter of these proposed explanations--crowd support--might have a paradoxical disadvantage effect on the home team's performance in potential championship deciding games if the team members were seeking to become champions for the first time. To elaborate, they noted that the prospect of a desired identity change (i.e., a redefinition of self from a contender to a champion) tends to increase self-attention (Schlenker & Leary, 1982). Moreover, they argued that a supportive audience attitude should heighten self-presentation concerns because it should help define--indeed, it should favor--the redefinition. Next, they proposed that increased self-awareness could harm performance because thinking of the possible redefined identity may distract from the needed response in the relevant activity. Indeed, increased self-awareness could also result in performers giving too much thought to well-learned responses, producing a disruption in the level of efficiency with which they are usually performed (Kimble & Perlmuter, 1970).
Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) tested their hypothesis by examining archival data related to early and final games in championship series in two professional sports: baseball and basketball. Their analysis of the World Series of baseball revealed that the home team won more frequently in early games (60.2%) than in final games (40.8%). Similarly, their analysis of the National Basketball Association Semifinal and Championship Series revealed that the home team also won more frequently in early games (70.1%) than in final games (46.3%).
Baumeister and Steinhilber's work has been cited in a great many general and sports psychology textbooks (e.g., LeUnes & Nation, 1989; Roediger, Capaldi, Paris, & Polivy, 1991), and such attention seems appropriate in view of recent empirical demonstrations of the generality of the effect. For example, Wright, Voyer, Wright, and Roney (1995) replicated Baumeister and Steinhilber's findings in an archival investigation of performance in the National Hockey League Stanley Cup playoffs. And in another archival investigation, Wright, Jackson, Christie, McGuire, and Wright (1991) found that the performance of British golfers in the British Open Golf Championship who were in contention entering the final round deteriorated, subsequently, to a greater extent than did that of non-British golfers.
In 1995, however, Schlenker, Phillips, Boneiecki, and Schlenker (1995a; 1995b) suggested various improvements to Baumeister and Steinhilber's (1984) methodology, and, after analyzing revised data sets that also included more years and series, concluded that the home-venue disadvantage effects with respect to baseball and basketball are "at best" era specific (see Baumeister, 1995, for a response to these criticisms and findings). Furthermore, Schlenker et al. also presented data indicating that choking, when it occurs, likely arises from mechanisms other than those proposed by Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984).
On this latter point, recall that Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) proposed that performance difficulties by home team players in decisive games should be particularly likely to occur when their team is leading; these players should become self-attentive and distracted because of fantasies associated with redefining themselves...
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