In order to adaptively solve complex problems or make difficult decisions, people must strategically combine
personal information acquired directly from experience (individual learning) and social information acquired
from others (social learning). The game of football (soccer) provides extensive real world data with which to
quantify ...
In order to adaptively solve complex problems or make difficult decisions, people must strategically combine
personal information acquired directly from experience (individual learning) and social information acquired
from others (social learning). The game of football (soccer) provides extensive real world data with which to
quantify this strategic information use. I analyse a 5-year dataset of all games (n = 9127, 2012–2017) in five
top European leagues to quantify the extent to which a manager’s initial formation is guided by their personal past use or success with that formation, or other managers’ use or success with that formation. I focus
on the 4231 formation, the dominant formation during this period. As predicted, a manager’s choice of
whether to use 4231 is influenced by both their recent use of 4231 (personal information) and the use of
4231 in the entire population of managers in that division (social information). Against expectations,
managers relied more on personal than social information, although this estimate was highly variable across
managers and divisions. Finally, there did not appear to be an adaptive tradeoff between social and personal
information use, with the relative reliance on each failing to predict managerial success.
