Community

Working from Home and FPL – a Social Psychology Perspective

Just a few months ago the phrase ‘working from home‘ (WFH) carried very different connotations. Reserved for the shirkers and the untrustworthy, those who ‘worked’ from home were the envy of all and friends of none. Inhabitants of darkness and isolation, these mysterious individuals lived on holiday, found happiness in solitude and much to everyone’s annoyance, managed to do some work all at the same time. 

A global pandemic later and thousands if not tens of thousands of workers find themselves shopping for adjustable desks, purchasing bespoke artwork for their Zoom backgrounds and most pertinently, combatting the urge to catch price rises in between virtual meetings.

Whilst WFH veterans have experience in this domain, us newbies have been forced to adapt during the most challenging FPL season in recent memory. 

The fantastic Lateriser12 has recently preached the importance of adaptability in relation to FPL strategy and I believe this principle has merit beyond the bounds of our transfers and captaincy decisions. If we are to keep our heads above water this season, it will involve adapting to a new world in which we can linger in the FFS Members area without looking over our shoulders.

With the international break upon us, what follows is a few suggestions of social psychology strategies we can use to manage our emotions and make sound decisions in spite of this newfound freedom WFH.

1 – Push back against ‘Herd Mentality’ by restricting your intake of FPL content 

With more time at home there is increased opportunity to take in FPL content. The rapid growth of the fantasy world has birthed a sea of excellent podcasts, videos, articles and statistical information presented to help us navigate the minefield of FPL. The danger, however, is that with increased exposure to information we become susceptible to ‘herd’ or ‘mob mentality’.

Social psychologists have studied the irrationality of decision-making when driven by emotional reactions such as fear – concluding that trends in consumer (or in this case, FPL manager) behaviour can be explained by our innate desire to imitate those who we believe have a higher status than us.

In our fantasy world, the wealth of experienced managers producing content can be incredibly persuasive and in order to mitigate the temptation to ‘follow the crowd’ I believe it is healthy to restrict our intake of FPL content.

Select a few favourite podcasts or content creators, perhaps with differing opinions, and stick to them on a weekly basis. This will prevent homogenous information from overloading your decisions and provide you with healthy separation from the game. 

2 – Eliminate ‘Overchoice’ by forming a strategy

When looking at psychological processes, ‘overchoice’ is the phenomena that occurs when individuals are faced with an overwhelming number of similarly good options.

In most simplest terms, human beings are most satisfied when they have choice but not too much of it, as this pressures and confuses us into a state of stress. Poor decisions are made under stress.

For ‘overchoice’ to have a debilitating effect two features must be present: 1) No pre-existing bias towards any of the options; and 2) options of perceived equal merit.

Both of these challenges can be eliminated in two main ways:

Firstly, as mentioned above, allocating specific minutes (or hours) for FPL restricts the amount of time that can be spent engaged in the game and thus the number of viable options that become aware to us. With a near infinite number of transfer possibilities, overthinking can steer us further from the ‘obvious’ (typically obvious for a reason) pick.

Secondly, I believe it is important to develop a decision-making system or ‘strategy’ and stick to it – this in effect creates implicit biases which negate the impact of ‘overchoice’.

In FPL terms, what would this look like? Taking two elite managers as an example, one could adopt the strategy of chasing upside by targeting big hitters for captaincy in easy fixtures or exercise patience with proven assets based on good fixtures.

The fantastic Meet the Manager series have shown us that there are multiple ways to obtain a high rank, but most importantly, each successful manager has a way. It is the consistency to this strategy that allows these managers to increase their probability of getting returns by biasing their decisions with consistent criteria.

These strategies will all pay off over time: big hitters will deliver in easy fixtures if managers commit to the strategy and don’t get put off by failure (or success), similarly Mohamed Salah (£12.2m) will be one of the highest scorers (barring injury) and will also deliver captaincy hauls with patience.

Adopting a ‘strategy’ prevents us from emotionally reacting to isolated Gameweek outcomes and ensures us that we give probability a chance to work in our favour. 

3 – Combat the ‘Pleasure Principle’ by adopting a price-change strategy

The ‘pleasure principle’ suggests that we are innately wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

In commercial enterprise, this is why the anticipation of missing out on a discount creates pain and anxiety (discount theory), compelling people towards emotional decisions.

With price changes seemingly more volatile than ever there is increased temptation to monitor price change websites and make numerous changes accordingly with all this ‘spare’ time at home.

To reduce anxiety and ensure reliability in decision-making, managers could look to adopt a strategy to ensure consistency. If managers wish to attack price changes to increase value, this requires earlier transfer preparation than normal.

At the other end of the scale, if managers value time and increased information this requires a more patient approach and a willingness to invest value in information.

Making a decision one way or another will prevent managers from feeling like they are ‘missing out’ on a player as their price changes, as these variations have already been factored into their strategy. Ultimately, this should allow them to compartmentalise value as one of many factors to be considered, rather than the be-all and end-all on a Saturday night. 

There is no ‘right way’ to play FPL. No secret formula, hidden cheat-sheet or magic beans. What does exist is a sea of options for managers to consider and react to.

The most successful managers have one thing in common: consistency in decision-making.

In a probability-based game in which we have no control over the outcome, our challenge is not to manage our players but ourselves. WFH thus gives us more time to wrestle with our biggest mini-league rival and that person lives much closer to home than we think.

19 Comments Post a Comment
  1. TopMarx
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • Has Moderation Rights
    • 11 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Excellent article. 'Overchoice' is something I feel I struggle with in FPL, and developing a strategy is good advice. Thank you for the insights.

    1. Baines on Toast...
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Agreed. I put in place a few principles myself last weekend for exactly these reasons as I found myself swirling and making bad decisions purely based on too much time and information overload - you can convince yourself of anything with the right data.

    2. markdmwilliams
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 7 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Thank you! Really appreciate the positive feedback.

      1. TopMarx
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • Has Moderation Rights
        • 11 Years
        3 years, 5 months ago

        Pleasure, looking forward to reading more from you

  2. Old Gregg
    • 7 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Best defender up to 5.0

    Have Lamptey, James

    Thanks

    1. Teo_2197
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 4 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Probably Dallas, great attacking underlying stats for his price and Leeds are a good team.

    2. Camino Aleatorio
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 5 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Dallas, Ayling, Lamptey, Konsa, Crestwell

      Crestwell has interesting underlying stats

  3. SteJ
    • 4 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    An interesting article. I think the crazy start to the season has caused a lot of the otherthink and analsis paralysis many can be feeling.
    I think there is also a strong feeling of having to get off to a good start in FPL so many consume lots of information then discard it when it doesnt work out week one.
    The game has become more unpredictable, which can also cause people stress. When you put in lots of time and effort only to see a series of freak results wreck your rank, it can be quite demoralising, leading to more rash decisions.
    Limiting your time on ffball info is a great idea, but runs counter to the business model of those sort of sites.
    They will want you to visit all the time and so will drip out the advice to keep you coming back for more

  4. Teo_2197
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 4 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Great read, thanks.

    1. markdmwilliams
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 7 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Thank you for the positive feedback!

  5. SkiLo72
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 4 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    A great article - and a useful reminder to apply calm thinking over the inevitable desire to seek out the mythical perfect team that will propel you to the top 1k. With many of the things we enjoy doing being limited by COVID I’m finding myself perhaps putting too much reliance on a good gameweek to make the weekend enjoyable...and with an OR around 2.2m,enjoyable weekends have been in short supply so far!

  6. Camino Aleatorio
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 5 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Avoid bad pundits like Andy....that guy is terrible.

    Avoid blogs run by Arsenal fans....one such blog once sold me on Ceballos as a future #10 in a top-6 team

    Avoid Manchester United fans .... that's just a rule of life, not just FPL

    RMT tools are silly

  7. MikeBravo
    • 5 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Interesting article, thanks.
    Justifies my personal strategy of being patient and not worrying about team value at all, not just from a 'wait for team news pressers' perspective, but from a psychological one as well.

    1. markdmwilliams
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 7 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Thank you for the positive feedback!

  8. Camino Aleatorio
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 5 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Buy or Sell:

    Reguilon is the next great wing player.....

    I love what I saw in the Europa League versus Manchester United and in the Final.

    But he was playing a very lazy and mentally slow Man Utd team, surely he can play like that all the time. Then, the next time I see him, he is playing Man Utd again and Spurs win 6-1.

    I am afraid that the Dumpster Fire that is Manchester United is making me think Reguilon is the next Andrew Robertson.

    1. Hy liverpool
      • 10 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Buy

  9. Greyhead
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 5 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Really good read - thank you!

    1. markdmwilliams
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 7 Years
      3 years, 5 months ago

      Thank you! Appreciate you taking the time to read it.

  10. FPL Fetish
    • 3 Years
    3 years, 5 months ago

    Excellent article... FPL is now getting into the field of psychology!!