Results of a combined experimental and theoretical investigation on the Fano-effect in the angle-integrated valence band photoemission of the noble metals are presented. In line with the fact that the Fano-effect is caused by the spin-orbit-coupling, the observed spin polarization of the photocurrent was found to be the more pronounced the higher the atomic number of the element investigated. The ratio of the normalized spin difference curves, however, agreed only for Cu and Ag with the ratio of the corresponding spin-orbit coupling strength parameters. The deviation from this expected behavior in the case of Au could be explained by the properties of individual d-p-and d-f-contributions to the total spin difference curves, that were found to be quite different for Au compared to Cu and Ag.