The Dynamics of Inattention in the (Baseball) Field

Recent theoretical and empirical work characterises attention as a costly resource that decision-makers allocate strategically. There has been less research on the dynamic interdependence of attention: how paying attention now may affect performance later. In this paper, we exploit high-frequency data on decision-making by Major League Baseball umpires to examine this. We find that umpires apply greater effort to higher-stakes decisions, but also that effort applied to earlier decisions increases errors later. These findings are consistent with the umpire being endowed with a depletable ‘budget’ of attention or the psychological theory of ego depletion. There is no such interdependence across the breaks that occur during the game (at the end of each half-inning) suggesting that even short rest periods can replenish attention budgets. An expectation of higher-stakes decisions in the future induces reduced attention to current decisions, consistent with a forward-looking agent allocating his budget strategically across a sequence of decisions of varying importance. We believe this to be the first large-scale empirical demonstration, from economics or psychology, that individuals may manage the stock of attention in anticipation of future use.