cognitive studies and Eagles's fans reactions to the Eagles offense

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/Eagles_offense_still_has_a_way_to_go.html#HewvP52aOCTjk1VO.99

There is a maximalist subset of the Eagles’ fan base that believes the only thing that matters is winning a Super Bowl. These people are wrong, says science.

Academic researchers have known for years that humans tend to overrate the long-term happiness effects of one-off events. You may believe that watching the Eagles win a Super Bowl will complete your lifetime experience as a fan, but in truth it’s unlikely to make you much happier, once the parade has passed.

In a foundational 1978 paper, university researchers studied 22 people who’d won a significant amount of money in the lottery, along with 29 accident victims who’d been paralyzed from the waist down. What they found is that after an initial burst of emotion – either positive or negative – all of these people tended to revert to an average level of happiness as time passed.

One potential explanation is what’s been termed the “hedonic treadmill.” As we get more stuff – whether that’s money, health or a perennially contending home sports team – our expectations rise in lockstep with our circumstances. That’s one reason why rich people aren’t all that much happier than those in the middle class.

This is also how Andy Reid ruined a generation of Eagles fans with his years of sustained success. At a certain point, ten wins and a playoff win felt like a birthright.

As annoying as the Negadelphians can be during a playoff run – “They’ll blow this, just watch” – there’s also research that suggests people in bad moods have better memory and cognitive performance. On the flipside side – and of particular note for observers of Chip Kelly’s press conferences – one study also supports the converse, in that a “positive affect” increases “susceptibility to misleading information.”

Speaking of Sam Bradford, there’s empirical support for the “yeah, but he’s our crummy quarterback” reaction, too. The classic research study involved coffee mugs, in which participants wanted to charge a much higher price to sell a mug they were given than they were willing to pay to acquire it themselves.

Economist Richard Thaler was the first to label this the “endowment effect.” People place a much higher value on an object they own than they did before they owned it, which helps explain our tendency to see the best in “our” quarterback, when we’d be more clear-sighted about his overall performance if he wore a different team’s jersey.

It’s not that big a deal, since we’re only fans, unless of course Chip Kelly is human too.