Understanding Survivorship Bias

Very early in my career as an assistant coach, I remember an instance during a youth training session when the head coach shouted at a player right after he missed a one-handed pass, saying that in basketball the pass should be made with two hands, because that way the chances of error are lower. I kept thinking about that and then asked: why should players learn to pass first with two hands and only later with one? Is there any reason for that? He replied that it was easier to learn how to pass the ball with two hands first and, from there, move on to passing with one hand.

That answer did not satisfy me, so I pushed a little further, arguing that in certain game situations, passing with one hand might be the only viable option. He then told me that a very famous coach taught that way; he had been an athlete under that coach, learned that way, and had always been very successful. After that argument, I, being a young assistant just starting my career, fell silent. At the time, I felt very frustrated with that answer. After all, I was new to coaching, and like many beginners, I believed I knew everything that was necessary to know.

Today, however, I feel a great deal of empathy for that coach, because throughout the rest of my journey I have made the same mistake many times (and still catch myself making it): assuming that something that is very successful, and that has been or is taught by great coaches, must work in exactly the same way for everyone, in all contexts, at all times. This problem is more common than we imagine, and it has a name: survivorship bias.

According to Chang (2024), survivorship bias refers to a cognitive fallacy that occurs when attention is disproportionately directed toward individuals or items that have managed to survive a selection process, while those that did not survive are ignored, mainly due to their lower visibility. In other words, the major problem with using the success of other people’s methods as a reference is that we become blind to the failures of those same methods, and the saying “history is told only by the winners” materializes right in front of us.

Thomas Kuhn, a famous philosopher of science, makes it clear that this bias appears even in scientific projects, suggesting that even in an extremely objective field (science), which seeks the best possible explanation, it is difficult to accept and do something different, even when there is clear evidence in favor of a new paradigm. I do not intend, with this text, to claim that we should discard methods that have been successful or that everything done so far by brilliant coaches and trainers should be thrown away. Quite the opposite: we should continue the journey with the help of these people, but with an attentive, critical, and contextualized perspective, since it is very easy to fall into the trap of “this is how it has always been done.”

Writing this, however, is almost a personal reminder, because my tendency is to believe that I need to know the right way to play or to teach, and once I discover that way, I must protect it as much as possible, disagreeing with anything that goes against what I think. But from the moment I understand basketball through the lens of ecological dynamics and realize that the game itself emerges from complex relationships among its participants, how can I believe that there is a ready-made answer? How can I guarantee that the way I teach will always work? Perhaps these questions are poorly formulated. Perhaps it is necessary to stop using a lens that pushes me toward fixed answers and instead embrace a perspective of complexity, in which a good coach is not the one who knows more or better, but the one who has the courage to explore new paths and the humility to learn in different ways.

References

• CHANG, X. Blinding the blind: The perils of survivorship bias. Advances in Economics and Political Science, v. 72, p. 55–59, 2024.

• KUHN, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.