High-Fives and Ass-Pats.

A forthcoming paper by Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner at UC-Berkeley investigates the correlation between "tactile communication" and success in the NBA. In essence, the paper demonstrates that "touchier" teams - and this includes everything from pats on the ass to high-fives - are also more likely to win. “Tactile communication, or physical touch, promotes cooperation between people, communicates distinct emotions, soothes in times of stress, and is used to make inferences of warmth and trust. Based on this conceptual analysis, we predicted that in group competition, physical touch would predict increases in both individual and group performance “say the authors ( via Frontal Cortex).

What I find incredible about this paper is that the researchers have sat through so many of the NBA games, observing if players are touching each other’s ass and if so, how many times, and concluding that the team that recorded the most number of ass-touching was more likely to win.

I wish I had read about this correlation, before IPL3 started. I would have spent my time more productively, keeping count of the tactile touches rather than the runs scored.

I could have used the sensitive information to make a killing off the bookies this season.

By the next season, I will come up with a counter that would record the number of ass-pats among the team members based on feedback from electronic sensors/transmitters secretly fitted on the backside of all players. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is an age of hi-tech data mining. Human observation alone will not do.