Changing clubs in professional sports lets a player face a new supportive crowd during home games, hence the question arises how performance is impacted by changing teams. This article measures the impact of the changed audience on free throw shooting performance. The data set includes all free throw attempts for 10 seasons from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and distinguishes between home and away games. Results support the idea that only free agents who were able to select a new team worsened their performance due to social pressure experienced during home games, while the performance during away games is unaffected. They suggest that especially bad free throw shooters suffer from facing this additional pressure.
Anderson, J.R. ( 1993). Rules of mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
2.
Balmer, N.J., Nevill, A.M., & Williams, A.M. (2001). Home advantage in the winter Olympics (1908-1998). Journal of Sports Sciences, 19, 129-139.
3.
Balmer, N.J., Nevill, A.M., & Williams, A.M. (2003). Modelling home advantage in the summer Olympic games. Journal of Sports Sciences, 21, 469-478.
4.
Baumeister, R.F. ( 1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 610-620.
5.
Baumeister, R.F., & Steinhilber, A. (1984). Paradoxical effects of supportive audiences on performance under pressure: The home field disadvantage in sports championships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 85-93.
6.
Beilock, S.L., Carr, T.H., MacMahon, C., & Starkes, J.L. ( 2002). When paying attention becomes counterproductive: Impact of divided versus skill-focused attention on novice and experienced performance on sensorimotor skills. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 6-16.
7.
Brockner, J. ( 1979). Self-esteem, self-consciousness, and task performance: Replications, extensions, and possible explanations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 447-461.
8.
Butler, J.L., & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). The trouble with friendly faces: Skilled performance with a supportive audience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1213-1230.
9.
Charness, G., Rigotti, L., & Rustichini, A. (2007). Individual behavior and group membership. American Economic Review, 97, 1340-1352.
10.
Dandy, J., Brewer, N., & Tottman, R. ( 2001). Self-consciousness and performance decrements within a sporting context. The Journal of Social Psychology, 141, 150-152.
11.
Deutscher, C., Frick, B., & Prinz, J. ( 2009). Performance under pressure: Estimating the returns to mental strength in professional basketball. Working Paper, University of Paderborn.
12.
Dohmen, T.J. ( 2008). Do professional choke under pressure? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 65, 636-653.
13.
Fried, H.O., & Tauer, L.W. ( 2011). The Impact of Age on the Ability to Perform under Pressure: Golfers on the PGA tour. Journal of Productivity Analysis , 35, 75-84.
14.
Gray, R. ( 2004). Attending to the execution of a complex sensorimotor skill: Expertise differences, choking and slumps. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10, 42-54.
15.
Heaton, A.W., & Sigall, H. ( 1991). Self-consciousness, self-presentation, and performance under pressure: Who chokes, and when?Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, 175-188.
16.
Jones, M.B. ( 2007). Home advantage in the NBA as a game-long process. Journal of Quantative Analysis in Sports, 3, Art. 2.
17.
Jones, M.B. ( 2008). A note on team-specific home advantage in the NBA. Journal of Quantative Analysis in Sports, 4, Art. 5.
18.
Leavitt, J.L. ( 1979). Cognitive demands of skating and stickhandling in ice hockey. Canadian Journal of Sports Sciences, 4, 46-55.
19.
Leith, L.M. ( 1988). Choking in Sports: Are we our own worst enemies? International Journal of Sports Psychology, 19, 59-64.
20.
Muraven, M., Tice, D.M., & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). Self-control as a limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 774-789.
21.
Nevill, A.M., & Holder, R.L. ( 1999). Home advantage in sport. An overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home. Sports Medicine, 28, 221-236.
22.
Pollard, R., & Pollard, G. ( 2005). Long-term trends in home advantage in professional team sports in North America and England (1876-2003). Journal of Sports Sciences, 23, 337-350.
23.
Schlenker, B.R., Philipps, S.T., Boniecki, K.A., & Schlenker, D.R. (1995). Championship pressures: Chocking or triumphing in one’s own territory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 632-643.
24.
Vorauer, J.D., & Turpie, C.A. ( 2004). Disruptive effects of vigilance on dominant group members’ treatment of outgroup members: Choking versus shining under pressure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 384-399.
25.
Wallace, H.M., Baumeister, R.F., & Vohs, K.D. ( 2005). Audience support and choking under pressure: A home disadvantage ? Journal of Sports Sciences, 23, 429-438.
26.
Wang, J., Marchant, D., Morris, T., & Gibbs, P. ( 2004). Self-consciousness and trait anxiety as predictors of choking in sport. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport , 7, 174-185.
