Knapen Jill E P, Pollet Thomas V, van Vugt Mark
1 Section of Social and Organizational Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
2 Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Evol Psychol. 2019 Apr-Jun;17(2):1474704919841914. doi: 10.1177/1474704919841914.
Research has shown a positive association between cues of physical formidability and perceptions of status, supporting a generic "bigger-is-better" heuristic. However, does better also lead to appraisals as bigger? Recent research suggests that the perceptual association between body size and social status can also be explained in terms of prestige. To test whether perceptions of prestige lead to higher appraisals of body size, we examined whether people apply a "better is bigger bias" (BBB) in football, where performance and body size tend to be uncorrelated. In two studies, we examined real coalitional sports groups on a national (Study 1) and team level (Study 2), and we manipulated target performance in an experimental third study. Results suggest that perceived performance significantly predicted both the perceived height (Studies 2 and 3) and perceived weight (Studies 1 and 2) of professional football players, supporting the BBB. Support for the team had a positive effect on body size estimations of the players; however, we did not find any support for winner or loser effects. We discuss these results in light of individual versus team performance and coalitional affiliation.
研究表明，身体强壮的外在特征与地位认知之间存在正相关关系，这支持了一种普遍的“越大越好”启发式。然而，更好是否也会导致被评价为更大呢？最近的研究表明，身体大小与社会地位之间的感知关联也可以用声望来解释。为了测试声望认知是否会导致对身体大小的更高评价，我们研究了人们在足球领域是否存在“更好即更大偏差”（BBB），在足球运动中，表现与身体大小往往不相关。在两项研究中，我们分别在国家层面（研究1）和团队层面（研究2）研究了实际的联盟体育团体，并且在第三项实验研究中操纵了目标表现。结果表明，感知到的表现显著预测了职业足球运动员的感知身高（研究2和3）和感知体重（研究1和2），支持了BBB。对团队的支持对球员身体大小估计有积极影响；然而，我们没有发现任何关于赢家或输家效应的支持证据。我们根据个人与团队表现以及联盟归属来讨论这些结果。
