(Note: This is almost certain to come across as vain seeing as how I play goalie.  Know that it was written with lighthearted intent 🙂 )

Some people are more attractive than others.  I know, big surprise: like wealth, beauty is a relative measure.  The great news?  On sports teams, goalies are the lookers!

Yes, there is a correlation between positions played in sports and the attractiveness of the players.  A well-written 2007 study (“Does the Face Reveal Athletic Flair? Positions in Team Sports and Facial Attractiveness” by Park, Buunk, and Wieling) took up this issue.

In the study, the researchers had women rate the attractiveness of faces of male soccer and ice hockey players.  The hypothesis was that certain positions in team sports depend more on heritable traits than others, and those preferential traits would manifest as improved attractiveness.

The study authors showed female students at the University of Groningen photos of faces of professional soccer and ice hockey players, which were selected to provide samples from the various positions in those sports (i.e., goalies/goalkeepers, defensemen/defenders, midfielders, and forwards/strikers).

The results were clear: of the soccer players, the goalkeepers and strikers were rated as significantly more attractive than the midfielders and defenders.  Similarly, of the hockey players, the goalies were rated as significantly more attractive than the forwards, who in turn were rated as significantly more attractive than the defensemen.

The authors went on to hypothesize that physical and psychological demands placed on goalies/goalkeepers and forwards/strikers depend on traits that are associated with heritable fitness.  However, they were unable to establish a causal relationship: are good-looking people pushed into more prestigious positions, or is it the natural talent that drives them there?

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational, objective beings, emotion and subjectivity still drive many of our choices.  It’s hardly surprising that we should base some of our decisions on looks given the ubiquity of such behavior in non-human species.  If lions, peacocks, and banana slugs all use looks as proxies for virility and athletic prowess, why not humans?  If certain positions on sporting teams require more of those traits, it seems intuitive that selection should occur based on them.

Reference:

Justin Park, Bram Buunk and Martijn Wieling (2007). Does the face reveal athletic flair? Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1960 – 1965.