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Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 204 (2022) 271–289
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo
Beyond performance? The importance of subjective and

objective physical appearance in award nominations and
receptions in football
Ho Fai Chana,ÿ , Fabian Ulrichb, c , Hannah Altman , Sascha L. Schmidt b,d,e ,
b
Dominik Schreyer , Benno Torgler a,e,1
a Queensland University of Technology (QUT), QUT Business School, School of Economics and Finance, and Center for Behavioral Economics, Society
and Technology (BEST), Gardens Point 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia b WHU – Otto Beisheim School of
Management, Erkrather Str. 224a, Düsseldorf 40233, Germany c Accadis Hochschule Bad Homburg, Am Weidenring
4, 61352 Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany d LISH – Lab of Innovation Science at Harvard, 175N. Harvard Street
Suite 1350, Boston, MA 02134, USA e CREMA – Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Switzerland
articleinfo abstract
Article history: Despite an extensive body of research indicating multifaceted advantages for employees
Received 24 February 2022 deemed physically attractive, factors that limit or even negate the attractiveness premium
Revised September 10, 2022 have not been sufficiently investigated. In this paper, we are interested in whether a rich set
Accepted October 14, 2022
of physical appearance factors matter when performance information is transparently
available, rather than – as is mostly the case in the labor force – imperfect or costly to
JEL codes: maintain. To this end, we explore the labor market of professional football players in one of
Z20 the world's most prestigious football leagues, namely the German Bundesliga. We investigate
J30 whether a rich set of physical appearance factors (including subjective attractiveness, facial
J44 symmetry, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), and body gestalt) affect players' chances of
being nominated or receiving the prestigious Player of the Month award . This study offers a
Keywords:
unique opportunity to explore selection heuristics among team captains who are responsible
Attractiveness
Awards
for the nomination of the players, and the public who votes on the three top choices by
Beauty
captains. Our results indicate that individual performance tends to be a stronger driver of
Facial width-to-height ratio award success than physical appearance. Interestingly, performance can moderate some
Football/soccer physical appearance factors (eg, beauty matters more for lower performing players) and
performance some positive assortative effects between captains and players along with physical
Physicalappearance appearance are observed (captains with higher fWHR scores are more likely to nominate
players who also have higher fWHR scores). In general, heuristics for captains are easier
to identify empirically than for the public. We also find some differences; for example, only
the public demonstrates a bias towards domestic players.
© 2022 Elsevier BV All rights reserved.
ÿ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hofai.chan@qut.edu.au (HF Chan).
1 We are very grateful to the Co-Editor Laura Schechter and two anonymous Reviewers for useful comments on the manuscript. This paper is a significant
cantly revised version of the SSRN working paper 4029582.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.022
0167-2681/© 2022 Elsevier BV All rights reserved.
HF Chan, F. Ulrich, H. Altman et al. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 204 (2022) 271–289
1.Introduction
The finding that attractive individuals are perceived to have more skills and competencies, as well as a superior character
traits (Dion et al., 1972), has initiated an abundance of research as to the effects of physical attractiveness on the assessment
of human abilities. Hamermesh (2011) stresses that humans are obsessed with beauty, and research on the topic tends to
conclude that “beauty matters” (Rosar et al., 2008: 64). These findings appear to hold across a wide spectrum of areas of study in
the attractiveness of stereotypes (eg, Hamermesh and Parker, 2005; Süssmuth, 2006). Attractive individuals are deemed to
be predestined for, and favored by, success as a result of others' assessments of their physical appearance.
Apparently, this effect is present not only in private interpersonal relationships but also in professional situations where
the attractiveness stereotype has been proven to hold in a myriad of contexts. Research has found that attractive individuals enjoy
better treatment in the labor market (eg, Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Averett and Korenman, 1996; López
Bóo et al., 2013); for example, beauty premiums in employee salaries (eg, Frieze et al., 1991; Biddle and Hamermesh, 1998;
Kanazawa and Still, 2018) and better career opportunities both in the military (Mazur at al., 1984) and in the private sector
(eg, Li et al., 2019) as well as in academia (eg, Hamermesh and Parker, 2005), where attractive university professors are
perceived to offer better lectures. Moreover, individuals' physical appearance may also influence the investment decisions of
investors in hedge funds (Pareek and Zuckerman, 2014). Thus, the attractiveness stereotype may even affect presumably free
markets.
Recent studies have found evidence for the presence of the attractiveness stereotype in the evaluation of leadership per
sonalities, indicating increased confidence in attractive leaders' competencies. For instance, attractive CEOs have been found
to boost share prices immediately after taking office simply by virtue of their appearance (Halford and Hsu, 2013). More over, facial
appearances have implications for how people select individuals, such as when choosing leaders (eg, Little et al.,
2007; Little, 2014; Van Vugt and Grabo, 2015). Similarly, more attractive constituency candidates are argued to have better
prospects of obtaining a seat in the parliament (eg, Efran and Patterson, 1974; Marwick, 1988; Klein and Rosar, 2005) only
because of their appealing physical appearance.
However, within the beauty premium literature, there are also studies which question the findings that good looks pay
off. Deryugina and Shurchkov (2015a) observe evidence of a beauty premium in a bargaining setting which is driven by
statistical discrimination (biased beliefs about the performance). However, subjects learned to adjust quickly as they received
performance signals meaning that already in the second round, beauty was no longer correlated with wage bids.
Dilmaghani (2020)'s results show no evidence of a beauty premium for men in the Canadian labor market while younger
women and women with a perfect education-job match faced a beauty penalty. However, attractiveness was positively correlated
with the number of fringe benefits for both sexes. Ruffle and Shtudiner (2015) explored in a field callback experiment
in job openings. They observed that beauty discrimination (positive and negative) occurred at the earliest stage of job search.
They find a discrimination against attractive women while men benefitted from a beauty premium. Thus, attractive females
suffer from negative returns in the labor market. Based on the follow-up survey they suggest that women are jealous and envy
part of the explanation. Agthe et al. (2011) showed that when the person being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator, it
leads to a disadvantage. Bi et al. (2020) looked at public speaking fees among scientists find that social scientists
benefit from a beauty premium while natural scientists benefit from an unattractiveness premium.
Surprisingly, the central tenet as to whether physical attractiveness or physical appearance – as opposed to real performance –
leads to such success has not yet been explored in much detail. More specifically, besides evidence by Mobius and
Rosenblat (2006), Andreoni and Petrie (2008), Deryugina and Shurchkov (2015b), and a theoretical modeling approach by
Altman et al. (2021), little effort has been invested in examining the magnitude of the attractiveness stereotype on success
when the actual performance of the individuals under consideration is overt and transparent. We therefore contribute to
the literature by focusing on sports as an environment where performance information is transparently available. Thus, in
contrast to the performance rating approach of Ross and Ferris (1981), in this study, we exploit an opportunity to measure individual
working performance combined with objectively and subjectively gathered employee appearance data by
using the sports environment as a setting in which performance variables are widely available to the public. Labor economic studies
often struggle to find settings in which objective performance assessments are available for a large group
of people under natural working conditions. Moreover, it is too often a very precarious task to adequately compare performance
among various heterogeneous individuals, taking into account varied job descriptions, distinct unobserved individual
strengths and weaknesses or different incentive structures and mechanisms. On the other hand, the sports environment
offers a real-world laboratory (eg, Goff and Tollison, 1990; Torgler, 2009; Chan et al., 2021a; Kahn, 2000) to explore the
relevance of individual appearances in more detail. This allows us to test questions in a relatively controlled high-stakes
environment, where incentives are clearly defined, and information is transparently available for outsiders to examine (cf.,
Chan et al., 2021a).
In our study, we are particularly concerned with examining the question of whether male males are attractive and more masculine
individuals are deemed superior and are granted more occupational success compared to their less attractive or less masculine
players. To be more specific, our analysis explores players' facial attractiveness, facial symmetry, facial width-to-height
ratio (fWHR), and their body gestalt. Thus, we are able to explore whether and how physiological cues such as facial appearances
matter for their success when controlling for their performance. Evidence indicates that human beings are able to
evaluate faces on a range of different trait dimensions (Todorov et al., 2005). In addition, we also explore subjective physical
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attractiveness based on a large number of rating assessments from more than 2200 online raters. Exploring both subjective and
objective attractiveness ratings is a major contribution of the study.
Furthermore, to measure success, we explore whether those characteristics explain nominations and public votes for the “Fußballer
des Monats” (Player of the Month; POM) award in the German Bundesliga, which is one of the most prestigious football leagues in the
world. When focusing on the POM award, we are able to separately explore two stages in the award bestowal process. First, we
explore how those characteristics affect the award nomination. For a few years, each month, team captains were requested to
nominate the league's POM. Based on those nominations, three players were selected who then went through the public electoral
process to finally receive the POM award. Thus, while captains had a large pool from which to select their candidates, the public could
only choose between three options. Thus, we can provide insights into internal (or insider) voting (captains' choices of success) and
external voting behaviors (public's choices of success).
From a theoretical point of view, we explore whether facial characteristics act as a heuristic among bounded rational captains,
providing a decision based on factors that go beyond players' performance. In addition, we complement previous studies on facial
appearances focusing on the political leader selection process via electoral votes (eg, Sigelman et al., 1990; Berggren et al., 2010).
We also contribute to the growing empirical literature on the economics of awards (eg, Frey and Gal lus, 2017a, 2017b; Chan et al.,
2014). As discussed earlier, the sports environment provides a comparable controlled environment in which to explore awards (eg,
Bünning et al., 2021) similar to research on awards in academia (eg, Azoulay et al., 2014; Chan et al., 2014).
Although performances alone cannot explain the award and nomination outcome, they matter a lot, being a more vital driver of
award success than physical appearance. Thus, our results show that physical appearances play less of a role in an environment
where individuals' performances are transparently visible. Physical appearance may therefore be taken as a proxy-indicator of
(expected performance) in situations where an assessment of actual performance is very time-consuming, extremely costly, or just
impossible. Moreover, we find that positive performance changes or more attention in the form of play time positively influence the
award selection. However, we also observe that performance acts as a moderator for each performance, ie, a beauty premium is
more likely to be visible among lower-performing players. Physical appearances also matter more when we match captains' and
players' characteristics finding evidence for positive as well as negative assortment. Our results also indicate that it is easier to identify
the choice heuristics of captains than the public ones. Beyond that, we were also able to identify some choice biases among captains
and the public.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows: In the next section, ie, Section 2, we provide the theoretical considerations
underpinning our investigation. In Section 3, we provide a summary of the application settings around the POM award in the Bundesliga.
Section 4 presents the data and methodology, including the construction of physical appearance measures and information of players.
In Section 5, we report and discuss the results of the two award stages. Finally, Section 6 concludes with relevant managerial
implications and the limitations of our study.
2. Related literature on physical appearance
2.1. Face judgments
Faces provide a rich source of social and interpersonal information (eg, Stirrat and Perrett, 2012). Wade et al. (2004), for example,
stress that “the face carries the most weight in the perception of men” (1083; see also Wade, 2000; Scholz and Sicinski, 2015).
Drawing trait inferences based on facial characteristics is not only relevant from an evolutionary perspective (eg, Todorov et al., 2005)
– being an adaptive way of getting relevant survival cues to human social values across major domains such as kin, mating, and
cooperation (Sugiyama, 2005) – but it also makes sense when seen in the context of a number of contributions to the behavioral
economics literature. For instance, following the work of Gigerenzer (2007; cf., Gigerenzer and Goldstein, 2011), the attractiveness
stereotype may work as a useful fast and frugal heuristic or proxy, a mechanism adopted by decision-makers to make better decisions
about individuals in environments where information is both costly and asymmetric (eg, Akerlof, 1970; see also Altman et al., 2021).
The work environment can be classified as such an environment. However, the question remains whether this holds even in situations
where job-related capabilities and performance are both measurable and transparent, as in the sports environment. Thus, to understand
the relevance of face judgments, we explore a variety of factors.
2.1.1. Facial symmetry

Scholars have long debated what makes a face attractive (Hoss and Langlois, 2003). Apparently, a variety of facial features
contribute to the overall evaluation of facial attractiveness. However, there seems to be no single most important facial feature. Neither
the size of the eyes, nor the shape of the nose, nor the dimension of the chin alone determines attractiveness, but how they come
together is what is important (Cunningham, 1986). Building upon the early findings of Galton (1879), Langlois and Roggman (1990)
introduced their thesis that averageness was attractive in the early 1990s. Hence, they claim that composite faces are more attractive
than the component faces selected to create them. Rhodes and Tremewan (1996) and Rhodes et al. (1999) as well as Hoss and
Langlois (2003) come to similar conclusions. Along this line, Perrett et al. (1999) found symmetric faces contribute positively to
attractiveness evaluations. Valentine et al. (2004) found that effects of facial geometry, averageness and symmetry both independently
determine and independently contribute to
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perceived attractiveness. When exploring the effect of facial attractiveness of football stars on fans' perceptions of the players'
personal characteristics, Hoegele et al. (2016) show that “the evaluation of another person's skills and capabilities is biased by his
or her [facial] attractiveness” (609). Moreover, Postma (2014) stresses that “facial attractiveness signals en durability
performance” (1), while also pointing out the importance of facial attractiveness – particularly against the backdrop of this study –
since Postma's study relates physical appearance directly with actual performance. Research indicates that facial averageness or
symmetry is an important factor for overall phenotypic quality and health (eg, Alcock and Thorn hill, 2014; Grammer and Thornhill,
1994; Thornhill and Gangestad, 1993). Facial symmetry is also highly correlated with human beauty ratings (eg, Komori et al.,
2009). As we are studying well-known football players, using facial symmetry allows us to avoid potential familiarity biases that
would otherwise occur when applying human beauty ratings.
2.1.2. Facial width-to-height ratio

Beyond facial attractiveness, we explore other facial characteristics as these features offer some additional valuable information
formation. Evolutionarily, information regarding strength is present in the face, as the brain contains neurocomputational
specializations designed to extract social information from the face. In addition, as the face is frequently the locus of attention (eg,
body areas are often covered) for humans, it is natural to find cues in the face for an assessment of physical strength (Sell et al.,
2009) .
People evaluate faces, for example, on various trait dimensions such as aggressiveness or trustworthiness, which also explains
why trait evaluations predict important social outcomes (Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008). Higher facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR)
is interpreted as a cue of masculinity (Chan et al., 2021b) and as being more physically imposing (Wong et al., 2011). It has also
been connected to aggression (cf., Haselhuhn et al., 2015) and financial success (Wong et al., 2011). Haselhuhn et al. (2015) found
a small but statistically significant positive relationship between aggression and males' fWHR. In another meta-study, Geniole et al.
(2015) found that fWHR predicts threat behavior in men and dominance behavior (both sexes).
Evidence in the sports realm indicates that when looking at participants of the Commonwealth Games, male athletes who
compete in more stereotypically masculine sports required greater fWHR values than males who compete in more stereotypically
feminine sports. In addition, men competing in sports with physical contact reported higher fWHR scores, although it was stressed
that differences could be attributed to body sizes between categories (Kramer, 2015). On the other hand, contrary to the results of
Carré and McCormick (2008), Deaner et al. (2012) did not find that NHL players with greater fWHR were more aggressive. What
mattered more was their body weight. Similarly, Mayew (2013) refutes Tsujimura and Banissy's (2013) shows that body mass, as
opposed to fWHR, is able to predict the performance (home runs) of Japanese professional baseball players. Sato et al. (2021)
found some evidence that fWHR is connected to drive achievement and sporting success when looking at professional basketball
players in Japan, but the effects are small. Krenn and Meier (2018) studied the German and Austrian Bundesliga and were not able
to find a significant impact of fWHR on factors such as committed fouls, received yellow and red cards, or assists and goals scored.
Looking at the 2010 World Cup players, Welker et al. (2015) report that fWHR is positionally dependent, predicting fouls among
midfielders and strikers, and goals and assists among forward strikers. Interestingly, when exploring leadership, Van Vugt and
Grabo (2015) find that people prefer leaders with dominant, masculine-looking faces in times of war or conflict while they prefer
more trustworthiness, feminine faces in times of peace. Further, some studies indicate that higher fWHR is correlated with lower
perceived trustworthiness or trustworthy behavior as well as lower integrity, greater likelihood to deceive, exploit others and cheat,
as well as perceived dishonesty and incompetence (eg, Haselhuhn and Wong, 2011 ; Jia et al., 2014; Ormiston et al., 2017), which
may affect award reception due to the importance of qualitative factors and perceptions in the decision process.
2.2. Gestalt body
Although the public only directly views facial images when voting for the POM, one cannot limit an evaluation of athletes to their
faces. People who regularly watch games and vote for the POM may have a good understanding and sense of the players' body
gestalt. Moreover, the body itself has been linked to overall attractiveness; Alike et al. (1986) show that body attractiveness has a
similar and independent influence on the judgment of overall attractiveness. Jackson and Ervin (1992), for example, found men with
a large body size were not only associated with masculinity and athleticism, but also with social and physical attractiveness. Hersch
(2011) also reported that taller men are rated as more physically attractive.
Taller men not only have better chances in the hiring process, they also earn more than shorter men (eg, Frieze et al., 1990;
Persico et al., 2004, Heineck, 2005).1 As well, they are assumed to be more powerful and of a higher status (eg, Wilson, 1968;
Jackson and Ervin, 1992). In addition, taller men are found to be more successful in both their professional careers and on the
dating market (Herpin, 2005). Thus, we will explore body height and BMI as a way of discovering whether body gestalt matters,
while controlling for the position of the players. For example, various very successful midfielders or
1 Here, Persico et al. (2004) found the height premium to be related to teenage height and therefore suggested that social effects might be an important channel for the
emergence of access compensation of tall individuals. Moreover, the teenage height premium is partially mediated by a participation in high school sports and clubs. Both
findings may strengthen the assumption of advantages of taller individuals in both an interactive and physically intense labor market.
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players such as Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi, who are among the greatest players of all time, are relatively short players.
Thus, body gestalt may affect other important aspects of football, such as agility.
2.3. Further physical appearance factors
Further obvious characteristics of physical appearance are hair and eye color; both are implicated in occupational success.
The vast majority of research activities concerning the impact of human hair color on human behavior or social interaction have been
devoted to women (eg, Guéguen, 2012; Guéguen and Lamy, 2013). Hinsz et al. (2013) found preferences exist regarding dark hair in
men irrespective of geographic influences. Apparently, dark hair seems to be associated with maturity and stability, and hence, positively
influences the perceived appearance of men. Kalisch (2010) confirms a preference for dark hair in men for the German speaking region
in central Europe.
In addition, eyes and eye contact are crucial in social interactions. Etcoff (2000), for example, points out that babies look as long at
a person's eyes as they do over the entire face, emphasizing the importance of eyes in human interplay. Eyes may also increase the
attractiveness of a potential partner in the human mating process. Empirical work by Kalisch (2010) recorded a preference of Germans
for bright eyes as opposed to dark eyes, irrespective of gender. This is in accordance with the initial findings of Gründl et al. (2012) in
which respondents mentioned eye color to be a positive feature much more often when the iridescent color was blue. This may be due
to the blue eyes stereotype present in art, mythology, and media.2
3. Player of the Month (POM) award in the Bundesliga
We use the Player of the Month (POM) award voting in Bundesliga, Germany's top-tier football league, as a proxy for personal
occupational success. By selecting football, a very popular sport in Europe (especially in Germany) as a field of academic applications,
we further ensure that there is sufficient public awareness for both the performance of the players and for the award presentation.
3.1. Bundesliga
The Fußball-Bundesliga, or simply Bundesliga, is Germany's top-tier football competition. With the season running from August to
May and a winter break between mid-December and mid-/end-January, the league consists of 18 teams playing each other twice per
season; one home and one away game per fixture totaling 34 game days per season.
During the seven seasons under consideration, ie, the seasons 2003–04 to 2009–10, the Bundesliga experienced steady growth,
both in terms of revenues and consumer interest (eg, DFL, 2013).3 Every game in the respective period was broadly casted live, at
least on pay-TV (some also on free TV). After each game, specialized sports programs and nationwide news formats showed summaries
and discussions publicly on available free TV, often repeatedly. Typically named the most in demand football league in the world, at
least based on spectator interest, (eg, DFL, 2013), the Bundesliga can be considered as an important event and a matter of public
interest in Germany. Due to the extensive public demand for Bundesliga football, both in the stadium (eg, Schreyer, 2019) and via TV
(eg, Schreyer et al., 2018, 2019), the performance of the players on the pitch can be considered publicly available and transparent.
Further, the public interest in the Bundesliga and its events becomes apparent when taking the steady revenue growth of the league
into account. In this regard, the revenues from advertising and from the sale of media rights are particularly remarkable, indicating a
growing public demand and interest in the Bundesliga (cf., Fig. A1 in the Appendix).
3.2. History of Fußballer des Monats (POM) award and its importance
The POM award was jointly tendered by independent and overarching institutions, ie, a sports magazine (Kicker), a sports
broadcaster (Sport1), and the German Football League. During the seven consecutive Bundesliga seasons between 2003–04 and
2009–10, the award was conferred by the bestowing media at the end of each playing month. In total there were 65 award rounds.4
The monthly prize-giving procedure was accomplished in two sequenced steps: First, all current team captains of the 18 Bundesliga
teams were asked to nominate one current player. Then, the public was asked to vote for one player out of the three most named
players (ie, with the highest captain votes) via phone or electronically (cf. Fig. A2 in the Appendix).
The captain voting results are unknown to the public. Additionally, none of the captains were nominated as the final three candidates in
any of the 65 award rounds.
2 Etcoff (2000), for example, points out that Disney's good Cinderella is blonde and blue-eyed, unlike her evil stepsisters.
3 For example, between the seasons 2003–04 and 2009–10, the total number of distributed tickets increased by about 19 percent to 12.8 million, primarily due to
an increase in season ticket interest. As such, during our observation period, the Bundesliga attracted a total of roughly 82.2 million potential stadium visitors.
4 The award was not bestowed between seasons and sometimes suspended during the winter break.
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4. Data and methods
4.1. Player performance and information
The player data consists of all Bundesliga players who played during the seven seasons 2003–04 to 2009/10. The data were
obtained from Impire AG, the official data provider of the Bundesliga during the sample period. We focus on players who have played
at least one match within the month in which the POM award was bestowed, which resulted in 57,714 individual performance records
from 1361 players across 2142 matches. While the dataset captures very detailed information on the player's individual performance
(eg, number of long passes and assists in the penalty area), we utilize the overall performance score calculated by Impire AG, which
is based on over 150 predefined single performance measures, ranging from 0 to 10. For the analysis, we aggregate the match-level
individual performance by the award month such that the unit of analysis is at the player-award level month. This resulted in a total
of 20,810 observations. The dataset also includes players' information such as birth date, date of current club and Bundesliga debut,
nationality, and height and weight, as well as past and current match outcome of the team allowing for the computation of team
performance. We have also accessed transfermarkt for additional player information regarding their career, such as the age at which
the player made their first appearance in the 'Big Five' football leagues (ie, English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Italian
Serie A, and French Ligue 1). Table A1 in the Appendix offers a summary of the descriptive statistics of the variables used in the
analysis.
4.2. Measures of physical appearance
Physical appearance includes six non-performance related player attributes. The first attribute is the subjective physical
attractiveness measure, constructed based on 114,050 rating assessments by 2,281 online raters from Germany and the United
States. The colored picture of each Bundesliga player in our sample was assessed 84 times, on average, using a 5-point scale from
1 “significantly below average” to 5 “very attractive”, with 3 being “average”. Similar to prior literature (eg, Hamermesh, 2006;
Andreoni and Petrie, 2008; Ruffle et al., 2022; Hamermesh and Leigh, 2022), we take the average of the rater-standardized ratings
as the physical attractiveness measure to account for the heterogeneity of attractiveness perception across raters and within-rater
variations. However, one potential concern is that the subjective evaluations may potentially correlate with raters' familiarity with the
subjects, despite our efforts to remove the saliency of the football con text from the photographs (eg, blurring the photo background
and removing the jersey). For example, familiar subjects are more likely to be rated favorably (eg, their exposure effect) due to their
performance (eg, longer-lasting professional foot ball career). We thus employed two approaches to deal with the issue of potential
bias. First, we use a regression approach to remove the effect of player's career performance from the average standardized ratings
from the full rater sample. Specifically, we take the residuals from the regression of average ratings on the highest market value
during the player's career (in log), total career length (in years), number of seasons and games played in the Big Five leagues,
number of times the team with which they are affiliated won the championship or ended up in the top three positions of the league
('residual-based' measure). Second, we asked the online raters to rate how familiar they are with the subjects being rated and how
interested they are in soccer. We can therefore use the average standardized ratings from raters with low familiarity (reported a
value less than 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very familiar) and low interest in soccer (reported a value of 1 (not at all
interested) on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being extremely interested) as the 'pure' aesthetics measure, which is unlikely to be skewed
by factors relating to the player's performance. Understandably, the pool of eligible raters decreased drastically with this approach,
however, each photo was still assessed 14.9 times, on average, with a minimum rating-per-photo equals 5. In the following analyzes,
we focus on the first measure while reporting the results using the second measure in the Appendix.
The second and third attributes are 'objective' facial appearance measures developed using face geometry. The first is an
attractiveness index based on facial symmetry and geometry ranging between 1 and 10, derived from the web-based photo analysis
software Anaface (cf., Halford and Hsu, 2013; Hoegele et al., 2014; Bi et al., 2020). The second objective measure is the facial width-
to-height ratio (fWHR), an esthetic proxy for masculinity and aggressiveness. The fWHR measure is calculated based on the ratio
between the upper face height (distance from the upper lip to the highest point of the eyelids) and bizygomatic width (distance
between the left and right zygion; cf., Carré and McCormick, 2008 ; Kramer et al., 2012; Lefevre et al., 2012; Chan et al., 2021b).
Further details of the online rating task procedure and construction of the facial asymmetry and fWHR are described in the Appendix
(Supplementary Methods).
Hair color and eye color were evaluated by four independent raters. In very few cases the four raters did not reach a consistent
verdict regarding the players' hair color and eye color a fifth independent rater brought about a final decision. Eye color is classified
into brown/ hazel and blue/ green. Hair color is classified into black, brown, blonde, and other. No players with other hair colors were
nominated. The last feature accounts for the players' body gestalt, for which we examine both height and BMI (kilogram/meters2) as
proxies. We include the squared term of each variable to capture the potential non-linear relationship.
4.3. Methods
To evaluate the potential influence of players' physical characteristics on their chances of winning the POM award, we employ a
regression-based approach examining their relevance in the two stages of the award process, ie, (1) the nomination stage by the
team captains, and (2) public voting platform.
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4.3.1. stage nominations

For the first stage, we estimate the likelihood of a player becoming one of three nominees using a Probit model. specifically,
we model the nomination outcome as follows:
Pr Nominatedij = (ÿ + ÿ Physical appearancei + ÿ Performanceij + ÿ Germani + ÿ Age and experienceij

+ÿ Visibilityij + ÿ Positioni + ÿ Award Roundj + ÿ Clubij) (1)
where Nominatedij is the dependent variable and represents whether player i was nominated by the Bundesliga team cap tains for the
public award voting in award month j. Nominatedij takes a value of 1 if player i receives the three highest number of nominations from
team captains in award round j and a value of 0 otherwise. ÿ() is the cumulative standard normal probability density function.
To scrutinize the effect of physical appearance on the outcomes of the award process, we control for a substantive set of performance-
related variables and other player characteristics in our regression models. In addition to player performance during the award month,
we include a measure of variability in performance, capturing the standard deviation of individual performance across matches in the
award month. We also control for the accomplishments of the players' team during the award month. Here, we employed two measures.
The first measure comprises the average points collected by the club during the award month (a team receives three points for each
victory, one point for a tie and no points for a loss).
The second measure, which accounts for the expected performance, is the discrepancy between the average points a team collected
during an award month and the point average the team earned per game during the last season.5 Moreover, we include players' visibility
by the number of matches played during the award month and the average minutes played per game. We also control for the number of
cards received as a proxy for aggressive behavior on the field.
We include players' age at the time of the award bestowal, as well as experience, measured by the number of matches the player
has played in the Bundesliga so far. We log transformed Bundesliga experience due to its right-skewed nature. Additionally, we include
the number of matches the player has played for his club as a measure of team loyalty. Players' position on the pitch is coded as
goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and striker, respectively. The dichotomous variable German captures the nationality of the player and
takes a value of 1 if the player has the locale, ie, the German, nationality and 0 otherwise.
Moreover, we control for the geographic region in which the player was born (eg, Western Europe, South America, Africa, Asia/ Middle
East).
Despite players' performance being highly observable, one potential concern is that the effect of physical attractiveness on the
player's career may happen at an earlier stage, that is, the selection to (high performing) teams due to physical attractiveness may affect
subsequent performance (eg , through players' coaching). To reduce such concerns, we include two additional control variables. The
first is the age at which the player made their debut in the 'Big Five' football leagues. The second variable relates to the 'quality' of the
'Big Five' debut team, measured by the number of times such team has been placed in the top three positions in its league in the past
three years. 6 We also include club- fixed effects, ie, club dummies, which controls for time invariant club characteristics (eg, reputation
or resentments towards the team) and award round fixed effects, ie, award round dummies, which control for time-specific effects that
impact all players (eg, number of active players in a certain round). Although we were not aware of systematic ex ante lobby activities
for the POM, club fixed effects may control for the possibility that different clubs may have different resources available to lobby for their
players.7
Lastly, we also consider the impact of player's off-field visibility and popularity, proxied by a measure derived from Google Trends
data (eg, Bernardo et al., 2022).8 This measure offers an opportunity to capture potential non-performance related factors that could
influence the nomination and award outcome but are correlated with physical appearance (eg, media coverage on personal, social life,
or charitable behavior). Similarly, beauty or satisfaction with one's physical appearance is found, for example, to be correlated with self-
confidence, optimism, or hopeful attitudes (Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006; Urbatsch, 2018; Dilmaghani, 2022). Such attitudinal factors
may matter for a “popularity contest” type of award like the one we explore. Thus, Google Trends data could help control for factors not
adequately captured by performance measures.
This measure could also help control for other professional achievements that are not captured by the Bundesliga performance (eg,
performance in the national competition World Cup, individual awards and honors). Additionally, we also develop a similar measure to
capture the team's popularity, which can account for the change of the team's popularity over time, which cannot be captured by the
club fixed effects. Furthermore, we use the lagged values of the Google Trends data (one-month) to avoid endogeneity issues (increase
in popularity due to the player being nominated or winning the POM award). Note that while Google Trends data do not distinguish
between 'positive' and 'negative' coverage of the player (eg, negative sentiments due to bad or scandalous behavior), we expect the
player's popularity to measure positively affect the award outcome
5 Effects through team promotions and relegations were accounted for by assessing the points for the first promoted team, ie, the Bundesliga 2 leader at the end of
the season, with the number of points collected by the best relegated Bundesliga team of the past season. Similarly, the points collected by the second-worst team of
the previous season served as expectation for the second best team in Bundesliga 2 during the former season (and so forth, if applicable).
6 All results are consistent if we measure past five years of team success.
7 One would expect that clubs have similar incentives to lobby. Moreover, maybe the lack of lobbying can be explained by the high frequency of the award.
8 Other studies have also employed search engine data to measure sportspersons' popularity and public exposure (eg, Garcia-del-Barrio and Pujol, 2007; Genoe et
al., 2021). Another approach to capturing media presence is to measure the number of times a player's name is being mentioned in newspapers (Franck & Nüesch,
2012) or sport magazines (Lehmann and Schulze, 2008). See also Müller et al. (2017) for further discussion.
277
Fig. 1. Distribution of player performance of 65 award rounds (a) and Ranking percentile of nominee's monthly individual performance (b). In panel a, blue curves
represent the individual performance of all players in each award round and orange lines indicate the nominated players.
(Bernardo et al., 2022). We describe the construction of the (individual and team) popularity measures using Google Trends data in
Appendix (Supplementary Methods). However, a general note in terms of controlling for factors that are likely to be (exogenously)
affected by attractiveness (eg, personality) is that they can be seen as “bad controls” (Angrist and Pischke, 2009) when estimating
the ' total' effect of attractiveness on the nomination and award outcome, since they are the intermediate mechanisms (Dilmaghani,
2020). In contrast, controlling for these factors would 'partial out' the indirect effects of attractiveness and reflect the bias in
nominations or award outcomes based on pure preference-for-aesthetic reasons.
4.3.2. Public voting stage

For the public voting stage, we again employ the Probit regression to examine factors that contribute to the award outcome in
terms of the probability of winning the POM award. In addition to the binary outcome variable indicating the winner, we also model
the share of public votes obtained by each of the three nominees as an alternative outcome variable.
We analyze the same set of physical appearance variables and control for performance related measures similar to the nomination
stage regressions. Given that only three nominees are competing for the award in each round, we centered most of the measures
(continuous variables such as physical attractiveness) by subtracting the average of all three nominees from the measure to highlight
the relative outcomes for each nominee. Given the small number of nominee observations, we do not include club-fixed effects or
award round fixed effects in the models.
5. Results
5.1. Selection of award nominees
To motivate our investigation into non-performance-based factors that determine nomination outcomes, we compare nominated
players' and other non-nominees' performance (cf., Fig. 1). While nominated players, ie, the orange distribution in Fig. 1a, were
clustered at the upper half of the monthly performance distribution, we also see that some high-performing players were not
nominated. Furthermore, when assigning players according to the percentile of performance within each award month (cf., Fig. 1b),
we find that more than 35% of the nominees fall outside of the top 5 percentile, considering each award round has 320 players, on
average. This indicates that performance alone cannot fully explain the peer nomination
outcome.
The results of the Probit regression model on nomination, focusing on the effect of subjective physical attractiveness, are
presented in Table 1. To evaluate the influence of the subjective physical appearance on the first stage peer nomination result, we
sequentially include additional independent variables in the model. We start with specification 1 with attractiveness. While extending
the scope of observation by augmenting the number of independent variables in each consecutive specification, we test for stable
explanatory contributions to the results of the peer nominations. Specification 2 addition ally includes other physical features that
are not related to facial attractiveness such as BMI (height), German nationality, player's age, and regions of birth. In specification 3,
we begin to control for individual and team performance, player's vision ability, and Big Five debut information. Specification 4
further incorporates players' experiences at the Bundesliga league and club level as well as the position on the pitch. Specifications
5 and 6 accounts for club-specific and award round specific effects, respectively. Finally, specification 7 controls for individual player
and team popularity. In this specification, we lose
278
Table 1
Captains' voting regression - Subjective attractiveness.
Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
subjective .0637 ÿ0.0045 .0126 .161 .1711 .1903 .2321

attractiveness (0.0948) (0.0935) (0.1269) ÿ1.1eÿ04 (0.1363) (0.1407) (0.1538) (0.1632)
.0016 2.1e-04 .0026 .0028 .003 .0037
BMI .7273 1.551 2,827ÿÿ 2.893ÿÿ 3.123ÿÿ 3.09ÿÿ
(0.7509) (1.154) (1,248) (1,274) (1,289) (1,439)
.0019 9.9e-04 8.1e-04 7.2e-04 7.6e-04 7.5e-04
BMIÿBMI ÿ0.0137 ÿ0.0314 ÿ0.0583ÿÿ (0.0243) ÿ0.0599ÿÿ ÿ0.0646ÿÿ ÿ0.0639ÿÿ
(0.0157) (0.0263) .0201 .0533 (0.0268) (0.0302) (0.0271)
german .0401 (0.0871) (0.0924) .028 ÿ8.7e-04 .038
(0.0713) 3.4e-04 8.5e-04 (0.0992) (0.1076) (0.1032)
.001 4.6e-04 ÿ1.4e-05 6.0e-04
age ÿ0.0112ÿ ÿ0.0159 .0133 (0.0059) .0174 .0185 .0203
(0.0107) (0.0145) ÿ2.8e-04 ÿ2.7e-04 2.1e-04 (0.0152) (0.0172) (0.0157)
2.8e-04 2.9e-04 3.2e-04
birth region No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Performance/visibility No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Experience/position No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Popularity No No No No No No. Yes
Club FE No No No No Yes Yes Yes
FE award rounds No No No No No Yes Yes
N 20.810 20,511 20,510 20,510 19.498 19.498 18.235
Prob > ÿ2 0.502 0,000 0,000 0,000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.000 0,017 0,388 0,430 0.436 0.454 0.460
Notes: Standard errors (clustered on each award round) in parentheses. Marginal effects in italics. The symbols ÿ, ÿ ÿ, ÿÿÿ represent
statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. The marginal effect for BMI is not computed due to the nonlinearity (see
Fig. A3 in the Appendix).
observations (the first five award rounds) due to Google Trends data availability (before 2004). We cluster the standard errors
on the award round level as the nomination outcome is naturally correlated between individuals within each round.9
Regarding the effect of physical appearance on the nominated outcome, we find that the subjective facial attractiveness
of the players has no predictive power. The same result is observed when we employ an alternative measure based on
ratings from raters who reported low player familiarity or low interest in soccer (see Table A2). In terms of body gestalt,
we observe a strong nonlinear effect of BMI on the nominated outcome (cf., also Fig. A3 in the Appendix) with BMI around
24 being the optimal value associated with the highest predicted probability of nomination. Interestingly, we found a slight
negative effect of player's height (p = 0.077).10 We also did not find evidence suggesting that the likelihood of being nominated
for the award differs between German and non-German players,11 while player's age seems to be negatively associated
with the chance of getting nominated.
In terms of other controls (see Table A3 in the Appendix), we did not find any evidence suggesting a nomination outcome
is dependent on the birth region of the players. As expected, we observed a strong positive effect of individual player
performance on the nominated outcome. Interestingly, we found that variation in performance, measured by the standard deviation
of performance across matches within the award month, is positively associated with nomination, which suggests that
fluctuating performance may attract the attention of team captains, leading to the positive outcome of a nomination. we find
that player's league experience has a strong negative effect, suggesting team captains favor players with fresher faces in
the nomination process. On the other hand, players' club tenure has no effect on award nominations. Moreover, the team
captains seem to prefer strikers and are less likely to nominate defenders (compared to midfielders), even when performance
variables are controlled for. Players' nomination likelihood benefits from their team's performance (measured either
absolutely or relatively). 12 Players' visibility is also highly correlated with the chance of being nominated. Players who make
their BIG FIVE league debut younger are more likely to be nominated, yet those who were recruited by a more successful
BIG FIVE club (determined by the number of times the club achieved the top three positions in the respective league in the
9 As a robustness check, we re-estimate the results by clustering the standard errors at the individual player level and team-award round level. the
the results are qualitatively identical with minimal changes in the level of statistical significance of the variables of interest. Furthermore, our results are also
robust to variable standardization within the award cohort. That is, for each player-specific characteristics (except for categorical variables), we calculate the
deviation in value (SD) of the player compared to his cohort average. Likewise, we transform the team specific variables into relative measures with respect
to deviation from average of all teams.
10 The regression results for height are omitted for brevity. Including or excluding BMI does not significantly affect the estimate of height, and vice versa.
Additionally, we do not find any quadratic height effect and including the cubed term also suggests a mainly downward sloping relationship within the
sample range.
11 The null effect is robust to excluding other physical attributes.
12 Absolute team performance is positive and statistically significant in specifications without controlling for club-fixed effects, while team performance
relative to the expectation (compared to that from the last season) is statistically significant when the FE team is included.
279
Table 2
Captains' voting regression – Objective physical appearance.
Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Facial symmetry ÿ0.0471 .0195 .0614

(0.0555) (0.0762) (0.0824)
ÿ0.0012 3.1e-04 9.7e-04
fWHR ÿ0.3483ÿÿ ÿ0.2194 ÿ0.3476
(0.1437) (0.2338) (0.2726)
ÿ0.0088 ÿ0.0035 ÿ0.0055
Other controls No Yes Yes No Isa Yes
Club FE No No Yes No No Yes
FE award rounds Yes Yes
N No. No. 18.235 No. No. 18.235
Prob > ÿ2 20.810 20.784 0.000 20.810 20.784 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.396 0.000 0.000 0.430 0.460 0.015 0.002 0.000 0.431 0.460
(7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Brown hair .0735 .0829 .1388

(0.0708) (0.1108) (0.1232)
.0018 .0012 002
Blonde hair .0812 .249ÿ .2641ÿ
(0.0829) (0.1282) (0.1456)
.002 .004 .0041
Green/Blue eyes .0439 .1123 .0804
(0.054) (0.0836) (0.0963)
.0011 .0018 .0013
Other controls No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Club FE No No Yes No No Yes
FE award rounds No No Yes No No Yes
N 20,666 20,640 18.136 20,810 20,784 18.235
Prob > ÿ2 0,534 0,000 0.000 0.417 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.001 0.433 0.462 0.000 0.431 0.460
Notes: Standard errors (clustered on each award round) in parentheses. Marginal effects in italics. The symbols ÿ ÿ represent statistical significance
at the 5% level. Reference group: Black hair and brown eyes. Other controls include variables used in Table 1 specification 7 (Birth region, Performance/ visibility, Experience/
position, Popularity).
past three years) are no more or less likely to be nominated. Lastly, players with higher off-field visibility are more likely to
be nominated.
Next, we examine the effects of other physical appearances on voting outcomes, namely facial symmetry, fWHR, and hair
and eye color, which are objectively measured. To assess the main effect of each feature, we first include each variable one
at a time and without controlling for subjective attractiveness (Table 2). In Appendix Table A4, we report the results in
which we controlled for subjective attractiveness.
Here, we find that facial symmetry does not appear to have any effect on the voting outcome. Interestingly, we found that
players with a higher fWHR seem less likely to be nominated for the award. Thus, factors that potentially explain higher
fWHR such as perceived aggressiveness may negatively affect success at the peer level. However, the effect of fWHR is no
longer statistically significant when player position is included in the model (cf., specification 5). 13 Moreover, any interaction
the effect between fWHR and players' position is also not statistically significant. Having blonde hair (as opposed to black hair)
has a statistically significant positive effect on being nominated, holding other factors constant, such as player performance.
For example, having blonde hair is associated with an additional 0.4pp increase in the probability of progressing into the
second stage, compared to black haired players. However, we did not find a statistically significant effect for eye color. Lastly,
there is no discernable difference from the main results when controlling for subjective attractiveness (Table A4 in the
Appendix).
To explore performance variations a little more, we interacted average performance with performance variations, relying on
specification 7 in Table 1 without controlling for the number of games played (highly correlated with the two performances
measures). The interaction is highly positively statistically significant while the performance variation is statistically negatively
significant (Table A5 in the Appendix). This shows that performance variation does not seem to penalize high performing
players; rather, it increases their chance of being nominated. In addition, we explore whether performance improvement also
increases the probability of getting an award, as changes are more likely to be recognized or attract attention. We define
improvement as the difference of average performance between two award rounds, ie, the current round performance minus
performance in the previous round. Thus, we also control for lagged performance, again applying specification 7 in Table 1.
The coefficient for improvement is highly statistically significant and the marginal effect indicates that 1 unit improvement
13 On average, strikers have the highest fWHR (widest face), followed by defenders and midfielders, while goalkeepers have the narrowest faces. Never theless, such differences are not
statistically significant.
280
Table 3
Moderation effect of player performance.
Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Attractiveness (residual) 3.48ÿÿ

(1.46)
Attractiveness ÿ0.4313ÿÿ
ÿPerformance (0.1988)
Attractiveness (pure) 2,409ÿÿ
(0.9467)
Attractiveness ÿ0.3059ÿÿ
Facial symmetry 1,899ÿÿ
(0.9396)
Facial symmetry ÿ0.2435ÿÿ
fWHR ÿ0.6299
(2,209)
fWHR 038
Brown hair 1.817ÿÿ
(0.9192)
Blonde hair 4.184ÿÿÿ
(0.9456)
Brown hair ÿ0.2177ÿ
Blonde hair ÿ0.5186ÿÿÿ
Green/Blue eyes 1,169
(0.8998)
Green/Blue eyes ÿ0.1456
german .0182 .0368 .0206 .0255 ÿ0.0186 .0085 2.252ÿÿ
(0.1072) (0.1078) (0.1107) (0.1086) (0.1126) (0.113) (0.8962)
german ÿ0.2947ÿÿ
Other controls Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Club FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
FE award rounds Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 18.235 18.235 18.235 18.235 18.136 18.235 18.235
Pseudo R2 0.464 0.463 0.462 0.460 0.466 0.461 0.463
Notes: Standard errors (clustered on each award round) in parentheses. Marginal effects in italics. The symbols ÿ ÿ represent statistical significance at the
5% levels. Reference group: Black hair, and brown eyes. Other controls include variables used in Table 1 specification 7 (Birth region, Performance/ visibility,
Experience/ position, Popularity).
in average performance increases the predicted probability of being nominated by about 0.2pp (Table A5 in the Appendix).
The lagged value is also highly statistically significant with a marginal effect value of 0.2pp.
5.2. Moderation effect of player performance
While the results thus far are based on the conditional mean of the covariates, one could argue that the team captains'
heuristics and biases are only relevant for players with relatively high performance (cf., Fig. 1, which shows that only players
whose performance is above 6 were nominated). We examine therefore whether the effects from non-performance
attributes are moderated by individual performance. Using specification 7 from Table 1 as the baseline model, we examine
the interaction terms between player performance and each physical characteristic.
First, we find a statistically significant and negative interaction effect between performance and subjective physical attractiveness
(both measures) and facial symmetry (Table 3 specifications 1 to 3). This suggests that facial attractiveness
(and facial symmetry) may reduce the likelihood of nominations for higher performing players, while increasing the chance
of attractive lower performing players to be nominated (cf. Fig. A4a–c). This contradicts the attractiveness hypothesis. For
fWHR, we do not find any moderating relationship with individual performance. Furthermore, we found some evidence that,
among players with outstanding performance, those with German nationality seem to have less chance of being nominated
compared to their non-German peers (cf. Fig. A4d). Similarly, brown and blonde haired high-performing players seem to
also be disadvantaged against their black-haired counterparts. On the other hand, we did not find a moderating relationship
between eye color and player performance.
5.3. Positive assortment
Next, we investigate whether the composition of the nominees, ie, the characteristics of the team captains, moderates
the effect of non-performance-based attributes. While the individual nomination is not publicly known, we take advantage
281
Table 4
Assortativity between captains and nominees.
Attractiveness (residual) (1) Attractiveness (pure) (2) facial symmetry (3) fWHR
Dependent variable:Nominated (4)
Player .1346 ÿ0.1124 4.021 ÿ17.21

(0.1563) (0.1385) (5.865) (14.79)
Captain ÿ0.1555 ÿ0.6492 4.196 ÿ14.75
(0.2723) (0.4093) (5.847) (14.75)
PlayerÿCaptain ÿ3.551ÿÿ ÿ2.745ÿÿ ÿ0.5197 7,848
(1.697) (1.216) (0.7734) (6,853)
Other controls Yes Yes Yes Yes
Club FE Yes Yes Yes Yes
FE award rounds No No No No
N 18.235 18.235 18.235 18.235
Prob > ÿ2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.443 0.443 0.441 0.442
Notes: Standard errors (clustered on each award round) in parentheses. Marginal effects in italics. The symbols ÿ ÿ represent statistical
significance at the 5% level. Reference group: Black hair and brown eyes. Other controls include variables used in Table 1 specification 7
(Birth region, Performance/ visibility, Experience/ position, Popularity).
of the frequently changing team captains,14 ie, the variation in the composition of captains across the season, to identify
how captain characteristics affect the selection of nominees. We particularly focus on assortativity between captains and
nominees. For each award round, we calculate the average values of captains' facial attractiveness, facial geometry score,
fWHR, the share of German captains and the share of captains in each pitch position (cf., Fig. A5 in the Appendix). in
addition, we relax the award round fixed effect as we examine the variation in captain composition across award rounds,
using specification 5 in Table 1 as our baseline model (also controlling for popularity). We test for the following potential
moderating relationships of interest: (1) whether more attractive players are more/less likely to be nominated when the
average attractiveness of captains is higher, (2) if facial aggressiveness is more strongly associated with nomination when
team captains are more/less masculine looking, (3) whether the chance of the player being nominated increases when the
share of captains of the same playing position increases. Furthermore, we test (4) if there is a positive assortment on German
nationality. The corresponding interaction terms are included in the regression model separately. We also examine whether
such moderating relationship is more visible among higher performing players.
First, we did not find any evidence suggesting a positive assortment between players' and captain's facial attractiveness
(cf., Table 4 specifications 1 and 2), rather we observe a negative and statistically significant interaction term between the
two (at 5% level for both attractiveness measures). This suggests that better looking players are slightly disadvantaged when
the average attractiveness of the captains is higher. Nevertheless, we do not observe this pattern being more pronounced for
players with higher performance, as the triple interaction terms with players' performance are not statistically significant.
While the player-captain interaction term for facial symmetry is also negative (specification 3), it is not statistically significant
(nor is the triple interaction term with players' performance). Second, while the two-way interaction between players'
and captains' fWHR is not statistically significant (specification 4), we find that the effect of players' fWHR on nomination
depends not only on the level of captain masculinity but also on players' performance. Specifically, we show that for higher
performing players, facial aggressiveness positively (negatively) affects their chance of being nominated in the presence of
high (low) captain masculinity, whilst fWHR has no effect on nomination outcome for players with low performance (cf.,
Fig. A6). This suggests the positive assortment on aggressive looks is moderated by performance.
In terms of pitch positions, we find strong evidence suggesting a positive assortment in nominations for 'minority' positions
held by captains, ie, goalkeepers and strikers (with 5% and 20%, on average, respectively, cf., Fig. A5). More specifically, we
observe that goalkeepers and strikers are significantly more likely to be nominated when the award round has a relatively
larger share of captains in the same position (cf., Fig. 2). For example, a 10pp increase in the share of striker captains, at
the expense of midfielder captains (holding the share of the goalkeeper and defender captains fixed), leads to an increase
of 1.4pp in likelihood of strikers being nominated, on average. Likewise, the probability of goalkeepers being nominated for
the award goes up by 0.8pp for a 10pp increase in the share of goalkeeper captains (and 10pp drop in midfielder captains).
Additionally, we find that a larger pool of defender captains is also associated with a small increase in the nominations
chances for strikers (0.58pp increase in nomination chance for 10pp increase in defender captains). The positive assortative
nomination among striker and goalkeeper captains is even more pronounced for high-performing players (Fig. A7). For ex
ample, conditional on players with a performance rating of 8.5 (which is around 75 percentile of nominees' performance), a
10pp increase in the share of striker (goalkeeper) captains leads to a 12.9pp (4.4pp) notional advantage for striker (goal
keeper) players compared to their high-performing peers in other positions. Here too, performance is a critical determinant
of selection.
14 Across the 7 seasons (65 award rounds), there are a total of 73 team captains. 60 captains (82.2%) served two seasons or less.
282
Fig. 2. Share of captains of the same position increases goalkeepers' and strikers' chance of nomination. We estimate the effect of a 10pp increase in the share of
captains in a certain position (goalkeeper, defender, and striker), at the expense of the share of midfielder captains, on the probability of a player in a specific position
being nominated. Estimates are obtained from a Probit regression similar to Table 1 specification 5 with interaction terms between player's position and share of
captains in different positions. Error bars represent 95% CI.
Fig. 3. Award outcome is not perfectly associated with objective player performance. Each cell represents the likelihood (in %) of observing the public voting outcome
according to the performance ranking of the nominees.
Despite the overrepresentation of German nationals in the team captain role,15 we did not find any strong (positive)
correlation between the nominations of success of domestic players and the share of German team captains (p = 0.185 for the
in action term). We also did not find any evidence suggesting better performing German (and non-German) players are more
likely to be nominated when there is a larger (or smaller) pool of German team captains as suggested by the statistically
insignificant coefficient of the trip interaction term between player performance, player's German nationality, and share of German
team captains (p = 0.423).
5.4. Public selection of Player of the Month
We now turn to the second stage of the award. As with the first nomination stage, we find that the monthly performance of
the nominees does not perfectly correlate with the actual public voting outcome (cf., Fig. 3). While the best performing nominees,
ie, within each award round, were most likely to win the public votes and least likely to end up in third place, it is not uncommon
that the actual award winner has worse performance than the non-winning nominees. This again indicates that there might be
non-performance-based factors at play in determining the public preference of winners, but largely among the relatively best
performing players.
15 The share of German nationals among team captains (61.2% on average) is significantly higher than other players (42.5% are German, p < 0.001).
283
Table 5
Regressions on the Fußballer des Monats award.
Dependent variable: Winner Coeff. SE margins. Controls N Prob > ÿ2 Pseudo R2
(1) Attractiveness (residual) ÿ0.3899 (0.5613) ÿ0.0996 Yes 194 0.000 0.284
(2) Attractiveness (pure) ÿ0.2208 (0.3596) ÿ0.0565 Yes 194 0.000 0.284
(3) Facial symmetries ÿ0.2125 (0.3188) ÿ0.0543 Yes 194 0.000 0.284
(4) fWHR ÿ0.4031 (1.093) ÿ0.1033 Yes 194 0.000 0.283
(5) Brown hair .1714 (0.3619) .0429 Yes 194 0.000 0.284
Blonde hair .2638 (0.3325) .0671
(6) Green/Blue eyes .1966 (0.2936) .0508 Yes 194 0.000 0.284
Dependent variable: Vote shares Coeff. SE Controls N Prob > F R2
(1) Attractiveness (residual) 3.76 (6,103) Yes 194 0.000 0.350

(2) Attractiveness (pure) ÿ0.9239 (4,473) Yes 194 0.000 0.348
(3) Facial symmetries .927 (3,384) Yes 194 0.000 0.348
(4) fWHR ÿ12.85 (9,595) Yes 194 0.000 0.354
(5) Brown hair ÿ2.418 (3,443) Yes 194 0.000 0.351
Blonde hair ÿ0.3161 (3,052)
(6) Green/Blue eyes 1.325 (2,948) Yes 194 0.000 0.348
Notes: Top panel: Probit regression on POM winner. Bottom panel: Ordinary least squares regression on public vote share. Measures of facial attractiveness,
facial symmetry, fWHR are centered by the average values of the three nominees in each award round. Each regression controls for centered measures of
BMI, BMI2, age, performance, performance variation, number of penalty cards, team performance, relative team performance, number of games played, average
minutes played per game, Big Five debut age, Big Five debut club (top 3), and Bundesliga and club experience. We also controlled for German nationality, players
position and birth regions. We group birth regions into Northern/ Western Europe, Southern/ Eastern Europe, South/ Central America, and Others due to the small
number of nominee observations. Marginal effects in italics. Standard errors (clustered on each award round) in parentheses. Reference group: Black hair
and brown eyes.
Our analysis below focuses on the binary award outcome, ie, the winner of the POM award, to which we employ a
Probit regression model (Table 5, top panel). We also provide the results for the alternative outcome variable, the share of
public votes obtained (cf., Table 5, bottom panel). We did not control for popularity in these models as Google Trends data
for the first 5 awards arounds (ie, year 2003) are not available. In Table A7, we report the controlling results for popularity
(specifications 4 and 8). The results remain unchanged.
To our surprise, overall, we did not find any evidence suggesting the award outcome is correlated with the facial appearance
of the nominees. From the two sets of regressions on the probability of the winner and the share of public votes obtained, we find
that the coefficients for subjective facial attractiveness (using either the 'residual-base' or 'pure' measure), facial symmetry,
and fWHR are not statistically significant. We also did not find any support that Bundesliga fans favor players according to
the color of their hair or eyes. Thus, we conclude that physical appearance does not seem to play a significant role how the
public decides the award winner.
We report the findings of other relevant factors such as German nationality, BMI, height (in alternate specification),
age, and other controls on award outcomes below (estimates are reported in Table A7). In these specifications, we retain the
subjective attractiveness (residual-based) measure in the model and show that its null effect on award outcome is consistent.
The (German) nationality of the nominee is perhaps the most important significant factor in determining whether he
will be crowned POM. For example, German nominees have, on average, around 23pp higher probability of winning the
award and receive about 10% more public votes compared to other nominees, holding other factors constant. such domestic
or ingroup bias is even more pronounced when we center the German dummy, ie, by considering the nominee's (German)
nationality relative to the other two nominees (specification 3 and 7 in Table A7). For example, the odds of winning the award are
32.2pp higher (22.7pp lower) if the nominee is the only German (non-German) player among the three nominees, compared
to the situation where all three nominees are Germans (or non-Germans). Likewise, being the only German (non-German)
nominee increases (decreases) the public vote share by 17.8% (8.1%). This effect is substantial considering that we did not
find any favoritism towards German players in the nomination process by the team captains (and even a German penalty
for high performing players).
While we did not find an effect for BMI, being taller (relative to other nominees) seems to reduce the chance of winning
the POM. This also contradicts the prediction based on height advantage. For example, being 10 cm taller than others
nominees lower the probability of winning by 12–16pp, on average. Nevertheless, such a negative effect is not statistically
significant for vote share. Bundesliga fans seem to give more votes to older nominees, controlling for their Bundesliga
experience. Nevertheless, this does not translate into a significant effect on winning probability. Similar to the team captains, the
public seems to prefer players who are new to the league as Bundesliga experience is negatively correlated with probability
of winning and sharing of fan votes received (highly statistically significant). In addition, the public also rewards nominees
who have stayed loyal to their team for longer (relative to other nominees) as they gather a larger share of votes and are
more likely to win.
A nominee's relative monthly performance (to other nominees) is positively correlated with the chance of winning the
award and public vote share, which suggests that fans, like team captains, also recognize players with good performance.
On average, nominees whose performance is 1 unit higher than the nominees' average (considering the standard deviation
284
of relative performance equals to 0.58) enjoy a 20–25pp increase in likelihood of winning and receiving about 10% more public
votes. Nominees with relatively higher performance variations also attract a greater number of fan votes (at 10% significance
level) but are not more likely to win the award. However, we did not observe a statistically significant effect of (relative) team
performance on the POM award outcome. Visibility (number of match appearances and minutes per match in the award round
relative to the nominees' average) does not appear to affect award outcome regardless of whether individual performance is
controlled for. This could be because of the small variation of the two variables among nominees or simply the fact that they
are well publicized (nominated). Players who debut in the Big Five league at a younger age are more likely to win the award or
secure more votes. Player popularity, as measured by Google Trends, seems to positively correlate with the chance of winning
and share of the fans' vote, however, such correlations are not statistically significant. Finally, nominees in the defender position
are significantly less likely to be awarded compared to midfielder nominees. For example, defenders are, on average, around
16pp less likely to win and receive about 6% fewer public votes than midfielders. However, in contrast to the results on
nominations by team captains, strikers were not particularly favored by the public compared to midfielders.
Finally, we also test whether relative player performance moderates the effect of non-performance-based factors on
probable ability of winning. We found no evidence suggesting that the effects of facial characteristics (facial attractiveness,
facial symmetry, fWHR, or eye color) or body gestalt were moderated by player performance. However, black haired nominees
who have higher performance than others seem to have a slight advantage in winning and obtaining more of the fans' votes,
compared to those with blonde or brown hair, which echoes the findings on the moderation effect based on the nomination
stage . Lastly, we find that the German bias is slightly reduced for nominees who have higher performance than others.
6. Conclusion
The outcomes of both selection stages for the POM award are driven more by individual and team performance rather than
appearance. This is expected, as performance is clearly visible and measurable in the area of sports, which is contrary to
other labor markets. Nevertheless, previous sports contributions have shown that beauty can pay off. For example, Berri et al.
(2011) find that physical attractiveness matters for National Football League (NFL) quarterbacks. Their results indicate that a
change in facial symmetry from one standard deviation below the mean to one standard deviation above leads to an increase
in salary by more than 11%, which is quite a large effect. 16 In addition, the ex ante was less clear whether non-monetary
success in the form of award nominations or reception may also lead to deviations away from performance factors towards
physical appearances. However, although we observe that performances alone cannot explain the award and nomination
outcome, they matter substantially. Beyond that, positive performance changes or more attention in the form of play time
positively influences the award selection. Interestingly, performance can also act as a moderator for appearance, ie, a beauty
premium is more likely to be visible among lower performing players, which may indicate some substitutional elements. In
addition, physical appearances matter when we take a closer look at the matching characteristics between the captains and
the players. We indeed find some positive as well as negative assortment. For example, for higher performance players,
captains with higher fWHR scores are more likely to nominate players who also have higher fWHR scores. Similarly, such a
positive assortment can also be found for captains whose positions are often less likely to be allocated to captains (eg,
goalkeepers and strikers). On the other hand, players with attractiveness similar to the captains may be less likely to be
nominated. Overall, we were able to identify the heuristics of captains in more detail than for the public. However, in both cases
we find that performance is a more dominant factor relative to physical appearance. In both cases, we observe a captain's bias
against defenders, while only strikers have a comparative advantage relative to midfield players. Contrary to the captains, the
German public seems to favor German players when allocating their votes and selecting the award winner, showing some
degree of ingroup bias (eg, Yamagishi and Mifune, 2009; Vuong et al., 2021).
Our results may imply that physical appearance is generally referenced as an assessment of an employee's performance
capabilities only in situations where an assessment of actual performance is very time consuming, extremely costly, or simply
impossible. This suggests physical appearance is taking the role of a proxy-indicator for (expected) performance of others,
given imperfect and costly information (cf., Akerlof, 1970). It therefore serves as a decision-making heuristic under certain
circumstances (Gigerenzer, 2007, cf., Gigerenzer and Goldstein, 2011). Physical attractiveness (or physical appearance)
works “as an imperfect signal of ability” (Deryugina and Shurchkov, 2015a; see also Altman et al., 2021). This interpretation
seems plausible, keeping in mind the earlier discussion that the vast majority of empirical studies addressing the implications
of (attractive) physical appearance omit analysis of the actual contribution of performance to the results measured. In fact, an
adequate assessment of the protagonists' performance or performance abilities is, in most cases, neither available nor
measurable or transparent. Physical attractiveness or appearance loses the function of an indicator for assigned and expected
performance as the effective performance provision is revealed (Altman et al., 2021; Altman, 2020). Andreoni and Petrie (2008)
also found people tend to reward beauty and females, “but when performance is known, the beauty premium disappears” (p.
89). Andreoni and Petrie (2008) find this to be independent of the actions of attractive people, but “due to the expectations of
how attractive people will behave” (p. 89). They further conclude that the adjustment of more favorable
16 In an alternative context, Dietl et al. (2020) note that facial attractiveness increases the demand for television programming for women, although not male
tennis matches, among others.
285
yet (wrongly) assumed behavior reflects the disappointment regarding stereotypes with regard to attractive people. Along the
same lines, Deryugina and Shurchkov (2015a) found a beauty premium in a bargaining task to be composed of statistical
discrimination, “which […] can be explained by biased beliefs about the performance of relatively attractive workers” (p. 344 ).
Furthermore, they stress that “employers learn quickly that performance is uncorrelated with attractiveness” (p. 332) and that
there “is substantial updating by employers and that biased beliefs correct themselves quickly when objective information about
performance is available” (p. 332 ) (for a discussion, see also Altman et al., 2021). In addition, the problem of bias has been
recognized in practice, and to mitigate such problems, a variety of measures have already been developed and applied. In the
US, for instance (but this also exists in modified forms in other countries), job applications are often only accepted if no inferences
of the applicants' physical appearance are made. This particularly affects the absence of photographs and may also include the
indication of applicants' gender. Virtual application processes, such as the use of telephone interviews or online tests where
distractions based on the appearance of applicants can be excluded from other mitigation strategies to circumvent potential
physical appearance biases.
Of course, our study is not free from limitations. For example, we focused our consideration on one highly specialized labor
market: top-tier professional male football in Germany. Thus, more evidence is needed in other areas where performance in
formation is transparently available. In general, we still need more studies to fully map the relevance of physical appearance
across a variety of industries and occupations, as the relevance or importance of physical appearances as a heuristic varies (also
based on the level of performance transparency). In addition, it would be useful to investigate the female sports market in more
detail (eg, Krause et al., 2022). Moreover, given that career records of professional athletes are often recorded in great details,
future studies could also further explore whether beauty premium occurs at an earlier career stage or in specific situations (eg,
whether more attractive players are given more opportunities) and assess how it changes or accumulates over time.
In this study, we examined the effect of several physical attributes beyond subjective attractiveness evaluation. These
objective measures are by no means the exhaustive list of physical characteristics crucial to appraising attractiveness and their
contribution to a beauty premium (or penalty). To unpack this, future studies could consider examining additional attributes such
as hair style, facial hair (Chan et al., 2021b), and tattoos (Ruffle and Wilson, 2018, 2019), which may also provide cues to specific
personality (Little et al., 2011). Nevertheless, time-dependent acceptability based on social/cultural norms may play a role when
considering these measures. Furthermore, evolutionary-based facial measures beyond symmetry, such as averageness and
sexually dimorphic traits (Foo et al., 2017; Scott et al., 2014) and a closer examination of the face geometry (Ibáñez-Berganza et
al., 2019) ) would also be useful. One extension to the objective body gestalt measures considered (ie, BMI and height) is the
waist-to-chest ratio (WCR), which is found to be correlated to male attractiveness (Coy et al., 2014; Price et al. , 2013 ).
Additionally, subjective evaluation of full body image may also be used.
Although our study provided some evidence on (dis)assortment based on physical traits, we do not explicitly control for the
interpersonal relationships between peers, particularly between players and captains. The social network between players (and
their strengths) may be an important factor to consider during the nomination stage as it may be correlated with the players'
attractiveness through interpersonal or social skills. An interesting opportunity that future studies could con sider is to measure
the strength of friendship between players via social media accounts (eg, who do players follow, online interactions, or co-
appearances at social/private events from photos). Furthermore, while including the popularity measure (with a one-month lag),
which may capture the public perception of the players based on their off-field behavior, attitudes, or other personality factors,
future studies would benefit from explicitly controlling for the public perception of players' personalities, which may correlate with
attractiveness perception, such as self-confidence, extraversion, assertiveness, trust worthiness, and optimism (eg, Mobius and
Rosenblat, 2006; Urbatsch, 2018; Dilmaghani, 2022). Such data can be derived, for example, from social media opinions such as
Twitter or Reddit (Bhattacharya et al., 2016).
Finally, exploring labor market outcomes beyond monetary compensation (eg, wages and fringe benefits) is in general a
promising avenue. For example, the empirical literature on awards and honors is still in its infancy. As Frey and Gallus (2017a)
point out, "[d]despite the importance of awards in society, research in social science has largely disregarded them […] the
literature on discretionary awards given ex post to outstanding performance is still in its beginnings " (pp. 193–195).
Disclosure statements
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Declaration of Competing Interests
None.
Data Availability
The authors do not have permission to share data.
286
Acknowledgment
We are very grateful to the Co-Editor Laura Schechter and two anonymous Reviewers for useful comments on the manuscript.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.022.
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Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 204 (2022) 271–289

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Beyond performance? The importance of subjective and

2. Related literature on physical appearance

2.1. Face judgments

2.1.1. Facial symmetry

2.1.2. Facial width-to-height ratio

2.2. Gestalt body

2.3. Further physical appearance factors

3. Player of the Month (POM) award in the Bundesliga

4. Data and methods

4.1. Player performance and information

4.2. Measures of physical appearance

4.3.1. stage nominations

Pr Nominatedij = (ÿ + ÿ Physical appearancei + ÿ Performanceij + ÿ Germani + ÿ Age and experienceij

4.3.2. Public voting stage

5.1. Selection of award nominees

Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

subjective .0637 ÿ0.0045 .0126 .161 .1711 .1903 .2321

Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Facial symmetry ÿ0.0471 .0195 .0614

(7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

Brown hair .0735 .0829 .1388

Dependent variable:Nominated (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Attractiveness (residual) 3.48ÿÿ

5.2. Moderation effect of player performance

5.3. Positive assortment

Player .1346 ÿ0.1124 4.021 ÿ17.21

5.4. Public selection of Player of the Month

Dependent variable: Winner Coeff. SE margins. Controls N Prob > ÿ2 Pseudo R2

Dependent variable: Vote shares Coeff. SE Controls N Prob > F R2

(1) Attractiveness (residual) 3.76 (6,103) Yes 194 0.000 0.350

Declaration of Competing Interests

The authors do not have permission to share data.

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