Outcome bias in subjective ratings of performance: Evidence from the (football) field

The outcome bias occurs when people assess others’ decision making process or performance and put an unwarranted weight to their outcomes. This bias has important implications for the judgment and choice as well as the performance appraisal literatures. However, virtually every extant study has been conducted in the lab, likely due to endogeneity concerns in field. Penalty shoot-outs in association football (‘soccer’) offer an interesting way of studying outcome bias, as recent research suggests that their outcome is unrelated to in-game performance. We use Goal (goal.com) to study subjective performance ratings by reporters given to 1157 players in 43 games from important football competitions. Using both multilevel mixed-effects and fixed-effects (within-players design) modeling, we found that winning on penalties was linked to higher performance ratings. This result persisted even after we removed players who took part in the penalty shoot-outs; thus, supporting the idea of outcome bias. We discuss implications for applied settings.