Physische Attraktivität und individuelles Leistungsverhalten. oder: warum und wann unattraktive Männer die besseren Fussballer sind

The fact that attractive people have more professional success than unattractive people is broadly documented in the social psychological literature. It has not been examined yet, however, if the success of attractive people is also based on a better performance. It is possible that attractive people achieve success with less effort than unattractive people as they are usually better treated by their social environment. The question is how a person's performance is influenced by his or her attractiveness. As the performance of professional football players can be measured rather simply and is comparatively well documented, we examined the 483 professional players of the 18 teams playing in the German premier league in 2007 and 2008 to answer this question. Each player's attractiveness was measured using the Truth of Consensus Method by averaging the attractiveness ratings obtained from an online survey based on portrait photographs. The players' performance was measured observing playing habits in detail. The statistical evaluation shows that a player's attractiveness tends to influence his performance negatively. This effect, however, depends on the players' attractiveness within his team: a high and homogenous attractiveness of all players in a team reverses the direction of the effect of attractiveness on performance.