Dennis Proffitt

Dennis Proffitt

Dennis Proffitt is a psychologist and co-author of the 2011 PLoS ONE study of positive contagion in golf.

Who they are

Proffitt is the last author of a paper with Lee, Linkenauger, Bakdash and Joy-Gaba. Golfers told that a putter had belonged to a professional judged the hole larger and sank more putts than golfers given no story. The authors call the idea positive contagion.

The article on lucky charms cites the study as a related belief that adds to the picture without settling the lucky ball question.

Key papers

Lee, R., Linkenauger, S. A., Bakdash, J. Z., Joy-Gaba, J. A. and Proffitt, D. R. (2011), PLoS ONE 6(10).

Key ideas

Beliefs about an object's history can change how a task feels.

Positive contagion is the name the authors give the idea.

Sources

  1. Lee, R., Linkenauger, S. A., Bakdash, J. Z., Joy-Gaba, J. A. and Proffitt, D. R. (2011), PLoS ONE 6(10), e26016.