Unpacking the bizarre economic study that says hot people aren’t big gamers

The greatest internal debate in the young history of Sherwood News concerns, of all things, a recently-released working paper from the typically wonky and often dry National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study is an examination of which teens and adults play video games, how much they game, and whether or not this is linked to their physical appearance.

This is far from common fare for the NBER: check out the other papers published at a similar time.

“Looks and Gaming: Who and Why?” immediately catches your eye when juxtaposed with mid 20th century rail programs in Britain and German pension reforms.

Its presence raised a number of knee-jerk questions and even more upon deeper reflection, some of which we’ll attempt to answer below and others we wouldn’t touch with a Grand Theft Auto RPG. 

What seems to have inspired the authors to write this?

One big factor: it’s new. 

Even in a field with a replication crisis (what field in academia doesn’t have that, though?), fresh material is simply more interesting.

From the report (emphasis added):

“Departing from previous research, we explore the influence of an overlooked factor—physical attractiveness (or “looks”)— on individuals' time spent playing video games during their teen years and adulthood. To our knowledge, this is the first study examining how personal attributes influence gaming behavior.”

There’s also a public interest argument made in terms of shedding light on something we don’t know. “Video-gaming accounts for roughly 3 percent of the non-sleeping time of the average American young adult,” the authors write. “It has become an integral aspect of many people’s lives worldwide, prompting significant interest in understanding its effects.”

Why does hotness matter?

One reality TV quote that lives rent-free in my head: “If any person in the world could decide to be ugly or cute, most would pick cute,” said Survivor contestant Morgan McLeod.

The authors review some research that shows the former San Francisco 49ers cheerleader is on to something. Better-looking people have better labor market outcomes. Within academics, teachers who are more attractive tend to get better reviews. Perceived beauty can even impact your lifespan, especially for women.

And crucially, for the context of this study, better looking people have an advantage in social relationships.

Economists are geared to think in trade-offs. One of the first models introduced in ECO 101 is “guns versus butter” – that is, the idea that governments face a sliding scale of choices between providing for basic domestic necessities and having a strong military. Whatever you’re doing, there’s something else you could be doing – the so-called “opportunity cost.”

So you end up with statements like this in the report: “gaming time should be thought of as part of a complete system of demand equations, which includes those describing other uses of time, both market and non-market.”

The researchers start out with the view that good looking teens (and adults) should be gaming less because they probably have more of a “competitive advantage” in non-gaming activities. In other words, hot people should be going through life trying to do things that maximize the benefits of being hot.

(Attractive young people are attractive young people, not hyper-rational, utility-maximizing economic agents! Their brains aren’t fully developed yet!)

How do we measure hotness?

The researchers draw upon the Add Health study of 12 to 18 year olds done in 1994-1995, and this isn’t a Hot or Not thing, where teens are rating one another. This is literally adults judging teens.

Per the study (emphasis added):

In each wave, at the end of each interview, the field interviewer rated the physical attractiveness of the respondent according to the following question: How physically attractive is the respondent? with the following options: 1. “very unattractive”, 2. “unattractive”, 3. “about average”, 4. “attractive”, and 5. “very attractive”

The Add Health study was done in waves to track these individuals over time; demographic information about the interviewers themselves isn’t readily available until Wave 3 (seven years later).

Assuming the Wave 1 interviewers were similar to the Wave 3 cohort, most were in their late 30s to early 50s when study started and the overwhelming majority were women.

“Our analysis reveals supportive evidence that is robust to a variety of alternative specifications of the measure of beauty and to different sets of covariates,” the researchers add.

So the way to assess teen beauty in a manner that has some intellectual rigor is for a bunch of middle-aged women to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5. Science!

As an aside, Footnote 5 in the study is also revealing on the human condition. There was some concern that asking the question at the end of this interview might skew the results. That is, that someone with a vibrant personality might be able to enhance the interviewer’s perception of their beauty during the process.

Footnote 5 helpfully addresses this concern and is quite revealing on the human condition. A separate German study in which attractiveness was assessed at the beginning and end of an interview showed very little difference in ratings.

Humans are shallow AF.

What did the paper conclude?

For starters, “beauty matters for gaming among teenagers.”

Hot teens are less likely to game; among teens who game, teens judged to be less attractive game more.

Perhaps hot teens do emerge as fully-formed, utility-maximizing economic agents after all.

The same holds true for adults: “As with teens, good-looking adults are less likely than others to game, while the few adults rated as bad-looking are more likely to engage in gaming (although not significantly more so than average-looking adults).”

Additionally, adult women are much less likely to game. 

Great news, if you’re a hot person: gaming won’t make you ugly.

“The relationship between looks and gaming does not arise because gaming makes people bad-looking: the causation appears to go from looks to gaming, not vice-versa,” the study concludes.

Phew!

“These results suggests that a simple economic explanation is quite consistent with what we observe—the better-looking have a higher opportunity cost of gaming as they have a comparative advantage in social interactions as an alternative leisure activity that is evidenced by more close friends,” they add.

Priors confirmed, back to work everyone. 

What about all the baddies streaming on Twitch?

Yes, they exist. But that’s really something outside the scope of this study and might also prove its point. In streaming, you have the ability to a) game and b) have people watch you game. So you’re still able to take advantage of hotness in a way you’d be able to do in other, more overtly social spheres. Arguably more so, because there’s no real limit on viewership!

Any final thoughts on this paper?

I’m reminded of why I hated microeconomics, even when it’s statistically correct. Especially when it’s statistically correct.