Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e26016. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026016. Epub 2011 Oct 20.
Many amateur athletes believe that using a professional athlete's equipment can improve their performance. Such equipment can be said to be affected with positive contagion, which refers to the belief of transference of beneficial properties between animate persons/objects to previously neutral objects. In this experiment, positive contagion was induced by telling participants in one group that a putter previously belonged to a professional golfer. The effect of positive contagion was examined for perception and performance in a golf putting task. Individuals who believed they were using the professional golfer's putter perceived the size of the golf hole to be larger than golfers without such a belief and also had better performance, sinking more putts. These results provide empirical support for anecdotes, which allege that using objects with positive contagion can improve performance, and further suggest perception can be modulated by positive contagion.
许多业余运动员认为使用职业运动员的设备可以提高他们的表现。这种设备可以说是受到了积极的传染，这是指一种信念的转移，即有生命力的人/物的有益属性转移到以前的中性物体上。在这个实验中，通过告诉一组参与者一个推杆以前属于一个职业高尔夫球手，来诱导积极的传染。在高尔夫推杆任务中，检查了积极传染对感知和表现的影响。相信自己正在使用职业高尔夫球手推杆的人认为高尔夫球洞的大小比没有这种信念的高尔夫球手更大，并且表现也更好，推杆进洞更多。这些结果为轶事提供了经验支持，这些轶事声称使用具有积极传染的物体可以提高表现，并进一步表明感知可以通过积极传染来调节。
