Soccer players: Anger display is correlated with conceding fewer goals, and happiness display with scoring more goals; the correlation between emotion portrayal and team’s performance is stronger for defensive players

Emotional expressions by sports teams: An analysis of World Cup soccer player portraits. Astrid Hopfensitz, Cesar Mantilla. Journal of Economic Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2018.04.008

Highlights
•    We study the display of anger and happiness, by soccer players participating in the FIFA Soccer World Cup.
•    We collected and analyzed a large database of 4,318 player portraits from 304 teams (1970 to 2014).
•    We find that display of both anger and happiness is positively correlated with the teams’ performance.
•    Anger display is correlated with conceding fewer goals, and happiness display with scoring more goals.
•    The correlation between emotion portrayal and team’s performance is stronger for defensive players.

Abstract: Emotion display serves as incentives or deterrents for others’ in many social interactions. We study the portrayal of anger and happiness, two emotions associated with dominance, and its relationship to team performance in a high stake environment. We analyze 4,318 pictures of players from 304 participating teams in twelve editions (1970-2014) of the FIFA Soccer World Cup, and use automated face-reading (FaceReader 6) to evaluate the display of anger and happiness. We observe that the display of both anger and happiness is positively correlated with team performance in the World Cup. Teams whose players display more anger, an emotion associated with competitiveness, concede fewer goals. Teams whose players display more happiness, an emotion associated with confidence, score more goals. We show that this result is driven by less than half the players in a team.

Keywords: emotions; facial expressions; anger; happiness; contests