It often starts with a rush.

A basketball player hits three shots in a row.
A trader picks three winning stocks.
A gamer lands three victories back-to-back.

Very quickly, a story appears in our minds:

“They’re on fire.”

Something must have changed. They’ve found their rhythm, their secret, their edge. We start to believe that recent success makes the next success more likely.

Psychologists have a name for this: the hot hand fallacy. It’s the tendency to think that someone who has been successful on a streak is more likely to keep succeeding— even when each event is independent and partly random.

To see why this belief is seductive—and so risky— imagine the famous story used by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A turkey is fed every day for a year. Each day, the bird becomes more confident that humans are its friends. Every extra day of food “confirms” this belief. Until Thanksgiving.

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day; each feeding confirms to the bird that being fed is the rule of life.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The turkey experiences what looks like a perfect winning streak. But the pattern was never about the turkey’s future — it was about the farmer’s calendar.

In this post, we’ll explore how the hot hand fallacy shows up in:

• Sports, where the concept was first studied.
• Business and economics, including the logic behind The Big Short.
• Gaming, where people believe in streaks even when they know the system is random.
• And finally, how you can use this concept in your personal life and at work to make better decisions, manage expectations, and develop stronger human skills.

As Daniel Kahneman neatly puts it:

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
— Daniel Kahneman

Understanding the hot hand fallacy is a powerful human skill.

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The Psychology of the Hot Hand Fallacy

Our Pattern-Hungry Brain

Humans are pattern machines, and that’s exactly why the hot hand fallacy feels so convincing. Our brains evolved to connect dots quickly:

• Rustling in the bushes might mean danger.
• Dark clouds might mean rain.

Seeing patterns helped us survive. The downside? We often see patterns where there are none. The hot hand fallacy is one example: we interpret random streaks as meaningful — especially when success is involved.

Psychologists call this a misperception of randomness. We expect random sequences to look balanced in the short term (alternating wins and losses), and when they don’t, we assume something special is going on.

What the Original Research Found

In 1985, Thomas Gilovich, Amos Tversky and Robert Vallone investigated what basketball players and fans believed about “streak shooting.” Their landmark paper, “The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences,” analysed thousands of shots from professional and college players.

They asked a simple question:

Are players more likely to score after a series of successful shots than after misses?

Fans, coaches, and players overwhelmingly believed yes. The data said no. Streaks appeared, but at roughly the rate you’d expect from random sequences. What looked like momentum turned out to be statistical noise.

Later research has complicated the picture, suggesting that small “hot hand” effects might exist for some players in some situations, but the key insight remains: our confidence in streaks is usually much stronger than the statistics justify.

Why the Illusion Is So Persuasive

Several cognitive biases feed the hot hand fallacy:

• Representativeness heuristic: We expect small samples to look like the long-run average. If we see three hits in a row, it feels “too streaky”, so we invent a cause: “He’s hot.”
• Confirmation bias: We remember the nights when “riding the hot hand” worked and forget the many nights it didn’t.
• Illusion of control: We like to believe skill and effort fully determine outcomes, even when luck plays a big role.

Put simply: streaks make for powerful stories. “She’s on fire” is far more exciting (and simpler) than “Random variation around a stable average.” Nowhere is that story more visible than in sport.

Sport – Where the Hot Hand Fallacy Was Born

From the Stands: The Player Who “Can’t Miss”

Imagine watching a basketball game and seeing the hot hand fallacy in real time: a player hits three three-pointers in a row. The arena erupts. Commentators say things like “He can’t miss” or “She’s unconscious right now.”

Fans and teammates feel the momentum. The coach calls plays to get that player the ball again. Opponents shift their defence to stop the supposed “hot hand.”

This is the hot hand fallacy in action: short-term success is treated as a reliable predictor of the next outcome.

What the Data Say About Streaks

Gilovich, Tversky and Vallone analysed real game data and found that, on average, players were no more likely to make a shot after a run of hits than after a run of misses. Streaks happened, but not more often than chance would predict.

Later work has found small hot-hand effects in some contexts (for example, free throws or three-point contests), but they are usually modest and only visible with large datasets and careful statistical methods. For players, coaches and fans watching a single game, what feels like a magical run is mostly the natural “clumpiness” of random sequences.

“The hot hand is a powerful illusion. What appears to be a hot streak is often just the laws of probability playing out.”
— (Paraphrasing Tversky’s findings)

Coaching Decisions and Team Dynamics

Believing in the hot hand can shape the way teams play:

• Over-feeding the “hot” player: A player on a streak may get more shots, even if a teammate has a better position or matchup. That might work occasionally, but over time it can lower overall team efficiency.
• Defensive overreaction: Opponents may double-team the “hot” shooter, opening space for others. If the hot hand is mostly an illusion, this adjustment can actually hurt the defending team.
• Self-fulfilling patterns: Even if the actual skill level hasn’t changed, confidence and attention can shift behaviour. A player who believes they are hot might shoot faster or from riskier positions. Teammates and coaches may encourage it.

There’s a subtle lesson here for human skills: when we react strongly to short-term performance, we risk distorting behaviour around us. And the same thing happens in organisations.

Business & Economics – How the Hot Hand Fallacy Misleads Wall Street

From Housing Bubble to The Big Short

In the early 2000s, many financial institutions treated rising housing prices as a “law of nature.” Prices had gone up for years — surely they would continue. Risk models, rating agencies, and investors all leaned on the same silent assumption: the streak will go on.

In The Big Short, this mindset is dramatised through characters who can’t imagine the housing market falling. Streaks of rising prices and low defaults made people feel safe. What looked like skill and stability was, in many cases, a combination of luck, complexity, and mispriced risk.

“Everyone is getting rich and no one can explain why.”
— Jared Vennett, The Big Short

When the streak broke, it broke violently. The cost of believing in the hot hand of the housing market was global.

Hot Hands in Careers, Teams and Projects

The same hot hand fallacy logic appears every day in business, just on a smaller scale:

• A salesperson has three excellent quarters. Suddenly, they’re treated as a superstar capable of anything.
• A product has a successful launch. Leaders start assuming every new feature from that team will be a winner.
• A startup founder lands a big early success, and investors assume their next venture will be equally brilliant.

Sometimes, there is skill behind these successes. But when decisions are based mainly on recent streaks rather than long-term evidence, we risk confusing luck and talent. This can lead to:

• Over-investing in “hot” people or projects.
• Ignoring underlying risks or constraints (“It worked last time; it’ll work again”).
• Undervaluing steady contributors whose performance doesn’t come in dramatic streaks.

Nassim Taleb’s turkey shows up here too: many businesses mistake a long period of calm or growth for proof that risk has disappeared — right before the “Thanksgiving moment” arrives.

Using Feedback to Balance the Story

One of the best tools to combat the hot-hand fallacy at work is structured, thoughtful feedback over time. Instead of judging people or projects only by their latest streak, we look at:

• Patterns of behaviour.
• Responses to feedback.
• Ability to learn and adapt.

This is precisely the spirit of the article The Astonishing Power of Feedback: 7 Principles to Transform Your Workplace Culture, which shows how regular, high-quality feedback helps leaders see beyond recent events and create a more accurate picture of performance over the long run.

When you embed feedback into the culture, streaks become data points, not entire stories.

Gaming – The Hot Hand Fallacy, Luck, Illusions and Losses

Hot Hand vs Gambler’s Fallacy

Gaming is a perfect laboratory for the hot hand fallacy because many games — like roulette or slot machines — are explicitly random. Players know this, and yet they still fall for streak thinking.

Two biases tend to show up:

• Hot hand fallacy: “I’ve won three times in a row — I’m on fire. I should bet more.”
• Gambler’s fallacy: “Red has come up five times — black is due.”

In simple terms, the gambler’s fallacy focuses on the outcomes of the game (“the wheel is due”), while the hot hand focuses on the person (“I’m hot”).

Both fallacies are incorrect because the underlying process is random, and each event occurs independently.

How Games Encourage Streak Thinking

Game and casino design often amplifies these biases:

• Near-misses: Slot machines show you results that look very close to a jackpot. This can feel like you’re “getting warmer,” even though the probabilities are unchanged.
• Win streak counters and badges: Online games give you visual rewards for consecutive wins. These can be fun, but they also reinforce the idea that streaks are special.
• Timed offers and “lucky” boosts: Promotions triggered after some play can feel like a response to your streak, when they’re often just scheduled features.

Research on gambling behaviour shows that people frequently change their bet sizes and take risks based on recent streaks, even though the underlying odds haven’t shifted.

“The problem with chance is not that it’s invisible — it’s that it looks exactly like skill.”
— Maria Konnikova

Protecting Yourself as a Player

Understanding the hot hand fallacy in gaming isn’t about killing the fun—it’s about protecting your wallet and your well-being.

A few practical rules:

• Treat every spin, draw, or roll as independent unless you know the rules say otherwise.
• Decide your budget and limits before you start playing — not after a few wins or losses.
• Notice when you catch yourself saying, “I’m hot,” “I’m due,” or “Just one more, I can feel it.” That’s your cue to pause.

If you enjoy games, enjoy them as entertainment, not as a test of your streak-reading skills. The house really doesn’t care whether you believe you’re on fire.

Personal Life & Work – Applying the Hot Hand Fallacy Wisely

This is where things get really practical. Understanding the hot hand fallacy is not just about sport, money or games — it’s a powerful lens for your relationships, career decisions, and leadership style.

Relationships and Personal Goals

In your personal life, streak-thinking can distort how you see people and yourself.

Some examples:

• After a few great dates or weekends, you might think, “We never fight; this is perfect.” A few difficult days later, you might swing to the opposite story: “We’re not compatible.”
• You exercise, meditate or study consistently for two weeks and decide, “This is who I am now.” Then you miss a few days and think, “I always fail at this.”

In both cases, you’re letting short streaks define the whole narrative. The hot hand fallacy leads you to over-interpret small samples: you’re either magically transformed or hopelessly stuck, based on a very thin slice of reality.

That’s why human skills, like self-awareness, emotional regulation, and critical thinking, are so important. They help you step back and see the bigger pattern rather than reacting to the last three data points. Your article Les soft skills sont-elles vraiment nécessaires ? makes this point clearly: soft skills are long-term capabilities, not overnight changes.

Managers, Performance and Fairness

Now imagine you’re a manager. How often are you swayed by streaks?

• An employee has three strong months, and suddenly you see them as a “star”.
• Another has a few bad weeks, and you unconsciously label them as difficult, lazy, or disengaged.
• A team delivers two successful projects and is then overloaded with more work, because “they can handle anything.”

If you’re not careful, the hot hand fallacy pushes you to start managing streaks instead of people. The danger:

• You reward recency over consistency.
• You overload “hot” people and ignore others’ potential.
• You miss root causes: stress, unclear priorities, or structural issues.

Thoughtful, evidence-based feedback is a strong antidote. In your post The Astonishing Power of Feedback: 7 Principles to Transform Your Workplace Culture, you show how ongoing, human-centred feedback helps managers see underlying behaviour and effort—not just the latest results.

Feedback across time beats impressions from last week.

Circle of Influence: From Streaks to Systems

Another useful tool is the Circle of Influence concept from Stephen Covey, which you explore in The Circle of Influence’s Powerful Benefits.

When you notice a streak (good or bad), you can ask:

• What in this situation is truly inside my Circle of Influence?
• What belongs to my Circle of Concern (things I care about but can’t control)?

Instead of thinking, “I’m on a lucky streak with clients” or “Everything is going wrong this month,” you can reframe:

• “What did I do in these recent meetings that I can repeat?”
• “What small behaviour can I change today, even if market conditions or other people don’t change?”

You move from obsessing over outcomes to focusing on systems and habits.

A Simple Everyday Checklist

To make this usable, here’s a quick checklist you can apply at home and at work whenever you feel the pull of a streak:

1. Spot the story: Notice when you’re saying to yourself, “I’m on a roll,” “They’ve lost it,” or “Nothing works for me.”
2. Zoom out: Ask: If I looked at the last three months, not the last three days, would I tell the same story?
3. Separate luck from behaviour. Which parts of the result were about timing or external factors, and which parts came from clear, repeatable actions?
4. Return to your Circle of Influence. Choose one behaviour you can repeat (if things went well) or adjust (if things went badly).
5. Replace labels with questions. Instead of “You’re on fire” or “You’re failing,” try:
   • “What do you think made this work so well?”
   • “What’s changed recently that might be impacting you?”

By doing this, you turn the hot hand fallacy into a learning tool. You use it as a signal to slow down, question your assumptions, and move from streak-driven reactions to intentional responses.

Conclusion: How the Hot Hand Fallacy Can Make You Stronger

The hot hand fallacy began as a question about basketball. Do players really get “hot”? The answer turned out to be more complex and much more intriguing than anyone expected.

What we’ve seen is that:

• In sports, streaks often look more magical than they are.
• In business and economics, belief in hot hands can inflate bubbles and distort how we judge people and projects.
• In gaming, illusions of streaks tempt us to chase wins and ignore the math.
• In personal life and work, streak-thinking shapes our stories about ourselves and others — for better or worse.

Knowing about the hot hand fallacy doesn’t mean you have to become cold or cynical. It simply means you gain a new form of intelligence: the ability to enjoy good runs, face bad runs, and still remember that a few events don’t define the whole picture.