Former champion Simon March examines the pitfalls of confirmation bias when it comes to Fantasy Premier League (FPL) management.
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Have you ever watched a football match and thought that a player played well, only to find that everyone else seemed to think they were really poor? Or have you ever looked at a player’s performance stats and found yourself highlighting the good ones and downplaying the negative ones? If so, you might be experiencing ‘confirmation bias’.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, recall, interpret or favour information which supports an existing belief, value or preference. It is a cognitive bias that most of us are aware of, all of us have experienced and none of us are impervious to. For FPL managers, confirmation bias can distort our analysis and cause us to make sub-optimal decisions. What confirmation bias is and how we can prevent it from negatively affecting our FPL decision-making will be the focus of this week’s article.
“The greatest trick…”
In the 1995 movie The Usual Suspects (spoiler alert!), petty criminal ‘Verbal’ Kint uses US Customs Agent Dave Kujan’s obsession with catching cop-turned-criminal Dean Keaton to deflect suspicion for the mass killing of 27 apparent drug-smugglers away from the true perpetrator and onto Keaton. During a protracted interrogation of Verbal, Agent Kujan hears evidence relating to the crime but focuses only on the information which supports his prior belief that Keaton is responsible. Meanwhile, he ignores any evidence to the contrary. Verbal leans into Kujon’s bias, allowing him to manipulate himself. It is only later, in one of the most iconic twists in movie history, that Agent Kujan realises who the true perpetrator is.
Agent Kujan is experiencing confirmation bias, a common mental state which, unless actively managed, can distort rational perspective for all of us. Part of what makes confirmation bias so pervasive is that it isn’t really one bias at all but, instead, it is the common effect of a number of different biases.
Confirmation bias might be triggered by the order in which we have received information, a personal experience or belief, an in-group bias (for example, we tend to favour players who play for clubs we support), which information we find easiest to recall, our fear of missing out on an opportunity and a whole host of other factors.
Ultimately, confirmation bias exists as a means of simplifying information in the world and avoiding the negative feelings associated with cognitive dissonance, the psychological state which we often experience when our actions are at odds with our beliefs or values.
Our decision-making tends to be at its most effective and efficient when it is objective. Confirmation bias interferes with our ability to analyse and consider information in an impartial way. It is particularly problematic in FPL because we have so much ‘noise’ to contend with when making our selection and transfer decisions. There are real-world allegiances, previous experiences with individual players, spurious narratives, player price considerations, group chats, online algorithms designed to feed our existing preferences and so on. All these elements can trigger this bias.
Confirmation Bias in FPL
Confirmation bias commonly manifests itself when we are making transfer or player selection decisions. It can occur whether we are using stats or watching football as our method of analysis.
1. THE EYE TEST
Addressing the ‘eye test’ first, the practice of scouting a particular player often primes confirmation bias. Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, we usually have a preferred outcome. Very often, when we choose to watch a player, we have already made our decision. Deep down, we are really looking to justify either transferring them in or ruling them out of our thinking.
Consequently, if we like a player, we tend to notice the things they do well more than the things they do badly. We notice when they get forward or ‘look lively’. We put great emphasis on such factors, even if they actually occur less than we might believe.
FPL managers are equally prone to shifting the goalposts for our analysis to suit our preferred outcome. For example, if a player plays badly overall, gets no open play opportunities yet manages to score a penalty, we might elevate the fact that they are on spot kicks in our decision criteria and downplay the other performance factors.
When a player we like performs poorly, we might blame teammates, opposition or misfortune. Or, if we actually want a reason to avoid a particular player, we might attribute a good performance to extraneous factors such as luck or refereeing decisions.
2. USAGE OF STATS
We often perceive statistics as being a more objective source of data. However, the use of statistics is equally prone to confirmation bias. It’s common for us, often unconsciously, to cherry-pick or ignore numbers which do or don’t support our preferences. Like Agent Kujan in The Usual Suspects, it is all too easy for us to form the evidence around our conclusions rather than allow the evidence to form our conclusions.
3. FORUMS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Finally, when it comes to forums and social media, confirmation bias might cause us to notice more frequently instances where other managers have selected or argued in favour of our preferred player(s), while also ignoring team reveals or arguments that favour alternatives. We might look at a poll that narrowly favours our preferred choice and feel that it conclusively validates our preference. Or we might go as far as to actively search for examples of other managers with a similar mindset in order to reinforce our player selection decisions (I confess I find myself doing this quite a lot).
How to avoid Confirmation Bias in FPL
One key step for avoiding confirmation bias in FPL is to have a clear idea of the criteria for our decisions before we begin to conduct our analysis. For example, if we are looking for a striker, we might decide that we want a player who receives a high volume of chances, occupies central positions and offers good aerial ability in order to take advantage of a common weakness we perceive in their upcoming slate of opponents. If we are explicit in our objective criteria before we start comparing players, we are less likely to later convince ourselves that a different player, who offers almost none of what we want stats-wise, is actually the better choice because, for example, they tend to offer better shooting accuracy.
Alternatively, it might be useful to practice what project managers call a ‘pre-mortem’. Essentially this involves imagining that your decision ended in failure and, from the point of view of this failure, looking back at your decision process and spotting the mistakes which might have caused it. Because this process asks us to focus specifically on the evidence which goes against our choices, it can help to counterbalance the effects of confirmation bias and ensure we have a broader and more balanced view of our available options.
