Yu Pan , Marco Henriques Pereira , Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez , Helmut M. Dietl
{"title":"The superstar effect on perceived performance in professional football: An online experiment","authors":"Yu Pan , Marco Henriques Pereira , Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez , Helmut M. Dietl","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2024.102776","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We conduct a novel experiment to investigate whether football superstars consistently receive more favorable evaluations than non-superstars. Engaging 500 participants from Prolific, we randomly assign them to evaluate the same football videos with either visible or obscured players. In the control group, where players are visible, superstars receive lower performance ratings than non-superstars, challenging common perceptions. This trend is more intensified in the treatment group, where obscured identities result in even lower ratings for superstars, relative to non-superstars, suggesting a diminished superstar premium. These findings provide causal experimental evidence contributing to the literature on evaluation bias and the superstar effect.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102776"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487024000849","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We conduct a novel experiment to investigate whether football superstars consistently receive more favorable evaluations than non-superstars. Engaging 500 participants from Prolific, we randomly assign them to evaluate the same football videos with either visible or obscured players. In the control group, where players are visible, superstars receive lower performance ratings than non-superstars, challenging common perceptions. This trend is more intensified in the treatment group, where obscured identities result in even lower ratings for superstars, relative to non-superstars, suggesting a diminished superstar premium. These findings provide causal experimental evidence contributing to the literature on evaluation bias and the superstar effect.
期刊介绍:
The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.