Elite athletes distinguish themselves through hard work, grit and, most importantly, raw talent. However new research, along with a study conducted by 麻豆传媒, points to another trait of the most accomplished jocks: a handsome face.
The better an American football player, the more attractive he is, concludes a team led by at the University of Bristol, UK. Park鈥檚 team had women rate the attractiveness of quarterbacks: all were elite players, but the best were rated as more desirable.
Meanwhile, a survey of more than a thousand followers reveals a similar trend for professional men鈥檚 tennis players.
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Neither Park nor 麻豆传媒 argue that good looks promote good play. Rather, the same genetic variations could influence both traits.
鈥淎thletic prowess may be a sexually selected trait that signals genetic quality,鈥� Park says. So the same genetic factors that contribute to a handsome mug may also offer a slight competitive advantage to professional athletes.
Kendrick! Kendrick!
This is not to say that the best athletes are always the best looking, either. The correlations uncovered by Park and 麻豆传媒 explain only a small amount of the differences in athletic performance.
That caveat was clear in our informal study of pro tennis players. Stars like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer garnered average attractiveness ratings only marginally higher than journeymen such as , currently ranked 56, and there were plenty of outliers. For instance, our lowest-ranked player, , actually got the best attractive score of the 30 we tested.
To establish these correlations, we randomly selected 20 tennis players in the world top 100 based on ranking point totals at the end of 2008, with two players from each decile (1 to 10, 11 to 20, and so on).
Next, we asked @newscientist Twitter followers to rate the faces of the players, presented in a random order, on a third-party website. We also asked the followers鈥� gender and asked them to rate their familiarity with each tennis player in the survey, but these factors did not affect the attractiveness ratings.
This web survey tended to include lots of lower-ranked players with very similar point totals, so we conducted a second survey of another 10 randomly selected top-30 players not included in the original survey.
Measuring a man鈥檚 prowess
When we first compared attractiveness ratings with each player鈥檚 ranking points, we uncovered a slight correlation between looks and performance that was not statistically significant. Considering that we analysed only 30 faces altogether, 鈥渢his isn鈥檛 too surprising鈥�, Park says.
However, when we compared the players鈥� looks to another measure of performance 鈥� the percentage of matches each pro won in 2008 鈥� the correlation proved statistically significant, though still modest.
鈥淭he study may have been conducted informally, but you鈥檝e made a new discovery,鈥� Park said after analysing our data. 鈥淲ho would have thought that better-looking tennis players are more likely to win matches?鈥�
One could quibble over which measure is more accurate reflection of a tennis player鈥檚 athletic ability. Ranking points favour players who compete in lots of tournaments and are unkind to those with injuries. Winning percentages, on the other hand, offer a purer measure of performance but it doesn鈥檛 recognise the quality of a player鈥檚 opponents.
Park鈥檚 team faced a similar problem in coming up with a reliable proxy for individual performance in a team sport.
鈥淥ur initial idea was that, across various team sports, some positions may be associated with greater athleticism, and hence greater genetic quality, than other positions,鈥� he says.
Dashing strikers
In previous work, they found that hockey goalies and forwards, and soccer strikers and goalkeepers, tended to be more attractive than their teammates. But that鈥檚 based on the assumption that those positions demand more athleticism than others.
To test attractiveness within a single position, Park鈥檚 new study focused on NFL quarterbacks, whose passer ratings are an objective, fairly independent gauge of performance. The rating is an amalgamation of several stats, including completed passes, yardage gained, touchdowns and interceptions, and it ranges between 0 and 158.3.
The team asked 60 female Dutch university students to rate the faces of 30 quarterbacks who played in the 1997 season and 58 who played in 2007 鈥� the season 鈥榮 New York Giants shocked 鈥榮 New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
Both studies turned up small but statistically significant correlations between good looks and passer rating, similar to 麻豆传媒鈥榮 findings with tennis players.
Brady or Ben?
Park could not reveal the specific rankings, but Brady topped the passer rating list that season, well ahead of the next-best quarterback, Pittsburgh Steeler . Brady is also married to Brazilian supermodel , so it doesn鈥檛 seem unreasonable that Dutch university students would fancy his face as well.
Fun as these links are, Park鈥檚 team 鈥� and 麻豆传媒 鈥� didn鈥檛 conduct these studies only to fuel pub banter. The results tie in with previous work suggesting that traits such as good looks and athleticism are genetically related.
鈥淚t鈥檚 safe to say that there are probably many things that lie between 鈥榞ood genes鈥� and athletic prowess,鈥� Park says. 鈥淲e really have no idea what physiological processes mediate the effect.鈥� Testosterone levels could be one factor.
Brains and brawn
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a really exciting paper and it鈥檚 great to see 鈥榞ood genes-mate choice鈥� theory being applied in the real world like this,鈥� says , a psychologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, whose work inspired Park鈥檚 paper.
He says Park鈥檚 results are impressive because all NFL quarterbacks are presumably far, far above average in their athletic ability, and the differences between the best and the worst are slight.
But athletic talent may not be the only explanation for the connection, says Miller, who also argues that intelligence also is an indicator of a healthy genetic makeup.
鈥淨uarterback is the position that requires the highest amount of general intelligence,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat might be happening is that the quarterback passing rating might be reflecting intelligence more strongly than physical athleticism.鈥�
Journal reference:
Methods and results
We randomly selected 20 tennis players ranked in the world top 100 based on point totals at the end of 2008, such that we included two players from each decile (1 to 10, 11 to 20, etc). This survey tended to include lots of lower-ranked players with very similar point totals, so we conducted a second survey of another 10 randomly selected top-30 players not included in the original survey.
For each survey, we asked 麻豆传媒 Twitter followers to rate the faces of the players, presented in a random order, on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = very unattractive, 10 = very attractive).
We asked the followers鈥� gender and we asked them to rate their familiarity with the players on a scale of 1 to 4 (1 = I do not recognise this face, 2 = This face looks vaguely familiar but I cannot place it, 3 = I know the context of this face but cannot name it, 4 = I can name this person).
We also conducted each survey twice on two groups, reversing the ordering of the faces to account for order effects.
Ratings did not differ noticeably by gender, so we lumped them together in our analysis. Only two players, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, averaged above a 2 in the recognition score, so we did not account for familiarity in our analysis.
We used two measures of performance: and the same season鈥檚 .
We next performed a linear regression correlation between average attractiveness score and either ATP ranking or winning percentage. The correlation between average attractiveness and winning percentage was modest, (r聽=聽0.36) but significant (p聽=聽0.02 in a one-tailed p test). The correlation between average attractiveness and winning percentage was modest (r聽=聽0.28) but not statistically significant (p听&补尘辫;别辩耻补濒蝉;00200.14).
