And You Look...Mahvelous

That may be something that musicians want to pay attention to in competitions.

A social psychologist, Chia-Jung Tsay, developed a study that used brief audio and video clips of concert piano finalists, some of whom won their contests and others of whom did not. A group of music professionals, as well as a group of people who just listened to music, were presented with audio only clips of the musicians and asked to judge whether or not the performer had won.

Neither the experts nor the amateurs were any better than random chance at picking the winner when they just heard the performance. When they heard the clip and saw video, they did a little better. But when shown a video only, both groups beat the average.

Tsay followed up by asking a group of people to judge qualities like passion or motivation, which competition judges often use as criteria for rating performances. Again, they used audio clips and video clips, and people matched the professional judges' opinions far more often when seeing the performance.

Our evolution to weigh visual clues more strongly -- given that we humans aren't all that great in terms of the rest of the animal kingdom when it comes to hearing and smelling -- probably plays a large factor, Tsay said. But I believe she overlooked the obvious answer, as explained by Billy Crystal in his "Fernando's Hideaway" sketch during the 1984-85 season of Saturday Night Live: It's better to look good than to feel good, and you look...well, you know.