Paradoxical effects of supportive audiences on performance under pressure: The home field disadvantage in sports championships.

Predicted, on the basis of recent research on self-presentation and self-attention, that the presence of supportive audiences might be detrimental to performance in some circumstances. Specifically, the imminent opportunity to claim a desired identity in front of a supportive audience might engender a state of self-attention that could interfere with the execution of skillful responses. Archival data from championship series in 2 major league sports supported this reasoning. It was found that in baseball's World Series, home teams tend to win early games but lose decisive (final) games. Supplementary analyses suggested that the pattern occurs when the home team has the opportunity to win the championship and that it does involve performance decrements by the home team. Similar patterns were found in semifinal and championship series in professional basketball. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)