If you are handsome and popular you spend less time on video games. Is this really the case?

A scientific study published on the site of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Nber) analysed the relationship between external beauty and the time people spend playing video games, confirming one of the best-known stereotypes of the last century: if you are ugly, unattractive, not very popular and physically not even in great shape then you are likely to play video games. Without going into too much detail (but we'll get into that a bit, ed.), the scholars' choice was to catalogue the behaviour of teenagers and adults on the basis of their appearance and physical shape to come to the conclusion that those who are more likeable are less likely to spend their time playing video games than those who are, let's say, less attractive (the same goes for adults).

But let's go into detail: the research was conducted by Andy Chunga, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Carl Singleton, Zhengxin Wang and Junsen Zhang and is mainly based on the analysis of data from the Add Health study, a longitudinal study representative of Americans. Basically, they studied the gaming behaviour of boys and girls in Wave I comprising 3,229 individuals and for adults in Wave IV comprising 3,228 individuals. This is just to define the sample size. The key measure on physical 'beauty', on the other hand, is based on the interviewers' assessment at the end of each interview, while time spent playing was measured by the participants' answers to a question on the number of hours spent playing video or computer games in the previous week. Finally, to analyse the relationship between physical attractiveness and gaming time, the authors used linear regression models.

The most interesting aspect is the researchers' proposed explanation of the reasons for this correlation (good-no video games and bad-yes video games). Let us start from the premise: video games are often a solitary activity, with few face-to-face interactions. Physical appearance, on the other hand, offers advantages in direct social interactions. Without going into the advantages of looking good in social life for the time being, we can already say that video games since they have become a form of online entertainment are to all intents and purposes a place of social interaction where appearance - in the sense of one's looks - for reasons of privacy is something that is obscured. Let's try to read more closely what the researchers write: 'The relationship between appearance and gaming does not arise because gaming makes people ugly (!?! ed): causality seems to go from appearance to gaming, not vice versa. Our results therefore indicate that personal attributes are significant determinants of gaming behaviour, an argument not previously documented in the economic literature'. Basically, the thesis is this: 'Good-looking people have a higher opportunity cost in playing, as they have a comparative advantage in social interactions as an alternative leisure activity, as evidenced by a higher number of close friends'. Which is a bit like saying: if you're a not particularly good-looking nerd you can only take refuge in video games because the real world marginalises you. Whereas if you're handsome you don't want to stick to screens because you have many more possibilities outside the home. It would be interesting to read the same study replacing video games with books, music and cinema and we would find that the same conclusions would be reached. Anyway, let us continue, because the real point is another.

One of the most controversial aspects of the kind of studies that try to explain the statistical basis of stereotypes is the suggestion that personal characteristics can influence how people spend their leisure time in the digital age. Which is a more sophisticated way of saying: being beautiful makes you more pleasant and therefore you can have more open doors in the real world. Which may be true, but not the other way around. That is, the not-so-beautiful who play video games - like the writer - can serenely choose between being offline and online regardless of their social success.

To better frame the 'debate', we could point to a study from July 2022 entitled 'Good video game players look better: Exploring the relationship between game skills, sexual dimorphism, and facial attractiveness', which this time investigated the relationship between people's gaming skills and their perception of facial attractiveness and sexual dimorphism (male and female). The study is published in Research Gate (these articles do not undergo a peer review process). The sample, in this case, is rather small: 147 video game players and 167 non-gamers. The aim was to assess the attractiveness of masculinised and feminised facial images, together with the perception of gaming skills (high or low gaming skills). How? Participants rated the attractiveness of masculised and feminised facial images, together with information on the level of game skill (high or low). Well what did they find out? Basically, video game players perceived facial images associated with a high skill level in video games as more attractive than those associated with a low skill level. This effect was not significant among non-gamers. As if to say: in the gamer community if you play well and are good you are also more attractive.