Does A Home Field Advantage Really Exist?

American football season has fully kicked off - pun very much intended - and everyone is glued to their TVs and radios (if those still exist) on Sundays to watch dozens of terrifyingly large men hit each other and move a ball across a 100 yard field. Now I'm not the most interested in sports but I enjoy watching a few games every now and then – if not for the delicious tailgating and football party food, then for all the super interesting psychological phenomena that happen without us really even knowing. There's in-group out-group thinking, conflict theory, and motivational climate in coaching to name a few. One that's rather interesting to me is the idea of the home field advantage. 

You're familiar with the home field advantage yes? If not it's the notion that teams will play substantially better when they’re on their home field as opposed to if they're playing on another team's field. If you're not into sports at all and are still reading you may be thinking, "The field should be the same everywhere, so why would it matter?" Well, many factors go into how teams play in a game like sun location, weather, wind, visibility, but namely and I think most importantly, the fans. 

Have you ever had a group of people cheering for you to do something and it made you want to do that thing better? Spectators shouting for you to run in a race faster, your friends urging you to climb to the top of a tree, or even college kids shouting your name to finish drinking your adult beverage, are all perfect examples of this (I've only had experience with one of these and I'll keep you guessing about which one). The encouragement and energy from those around you make you feel supported and determined to meet their expectations so as to 1. Increase or maintain your sense of self-worth and 2. Not disappoint those cheering for you thus decreasing your sense of self-worth in the eyes of others and in turn, yourself. You’re going to be more inclined to run faster if you have dozens of people shouting for you and screaming your name than if you were running alone.

There are a lot of studies on the home field advantage in social/sports psychology. Jeremy Jamieson in his 2010 article published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology entitled The Home Field Advantage in Athletics: A Meta Analysis found that "the home team wins a greater proportion of games played at home than away competitors," about 60% of the time overall. This is due to the familiarity with the location, not travelling far for competitions, and fan support. Jamieson also finds that as season length decreases, the home field advantage increases. So for basketball or baseball, the home field advantage will be less prevalent than for football, as football fans only have 16 games a season instead of 82 or 162 respectively, reflecting the urgency to win a particular game. This urgency will cause fans to really want their team to win their home game as they only have a handful they can win.

Now a different study by Harry Wallace, Roy Baumeister, and Kathleen Vohs published by the Journal of Sports Sciences in 2005 entitled Audience support and choking under pressure: A home disadvantage? found that the home field advantage is actually reversed when it’s a high stakes game like a playoff or championship game. Their study shows that players will feel so much pressure from their fans screaming and yelling during the game, that they will likely choke under pressure and under perform. Knowing that there is so much riding on them performing well can cause the players to self-analyze. This can cause them to pay much more attention to what they are doing overriding their muscle memory and make mistakes. Have you ever focused on doing something so much you messed up doing it? For example if you’re going to try and make a free throw shot, which you’ve made a thousand times before, but you know this shot could win you the championship game, the added pressure and attention to what you’re doing might cause you to get in your own head and miss the shot.

The interesting thing is that the Jamieson study actually accounts for this and disputes it! Jamieson’s study finds that playoff or championship games played at home actually have a higher rate of the home team winning than during the regular season. Jamieson finds that "home competitors have an advantage over away competitors and will win approximately 63% of playoff or championship sporting contests".

However, an even more interesting finding from the Wallace, Baumeister, and Vohs study is that the home team will more likely choke during an important game unless they are narcissistic. They clarify that they don't mean people who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but people who generally have narcissistic views about themselves and believe they are far superior to others. They find that because narcissists have little concern for others, it doesn't matter what the audience thinks, so the pressure will cause them to choke less than a person who is not narcissistic. The study notes that "narcissistic performers may not care much about whether they receive audience support or not, as long as the audience is present and attentive to their performance". They will try and seek glory wherever they can, and a crowd cheering for them during a playoff or championship game will allow them to do just that. 

So if you're playing in a huge game at home that you need to win and the crowd is cheering you on, according to Wallace, Baumeister, and Vohs you're more likely to choke during that game, unless you're a narcissist. According to Jamieson you will almost always do better. So are these findings contradictory? Well maybe not. Perhaps Wallace, Baumeister, and Vohs are correct in that narcissism is a solid predictor on home game performance for critical games, and the reason that Jamieson's study finds 63% of critical home games are won by the home team is that athletes at high levels are very susceptible to becoming narcissists. Now I’m not saying that all athletes are narcissists. But all of the money, power, fame, and glory that come from being not only a high level athlete, but one that is extremely successful can very quickly make people believe they are leaps and bounds better than others. The culture surrounding sports also fosters this narcissistic thinking when we constantly talk about them, have networks dedicated to their performance, and praise them for being modern day gladiators. 

The fans of a game can very much influence how well a team does at home. They can be both a boon and an obstacle for performing well during the game. During the regular season there is a lot of evidence supporting the idea that a home field advantage exists and helps teams win more of their home games than away games. When it comes to playoff and championship games the home field advantage exists, perhaps just for those who are narcissistic, and can also cause an immense amount of pressure resulting in the home team choking and making mistakes. There are countless complex social and psychological forces that go into what determines how well a sports team performs, fostering a lot of unpredictability in games. This however is precisely the reason that we, who enjoy sports (or maybe just the food during them), watch these games on the edge of our seats.