Red = Stanley Cup? . . . The Science of Red

Seeing red . . . it conjures a number of visions.

Anger, aggression, blood, a raging bull, and…

…science?

Well, yes. Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton of the University of Durham took a look at several events in the 2004 Summer Olympic Games with an eye toward establishing whether there wasn't a relationship between a color won by an athlete and outcomes. All of the events involved two-person matches in which the competitors were randomly assigned either competition colors of red or blue. What they found was that athletes wearing red had a small, but statistically significant, advantage and won 60 percent of the time.

Hill and Barton also looked at the team sport aspect of the question by reviewing results from a 2004 international soccer tournament. In this instance teams wore different colored uniforms (i.e., they were not restricted to a single color). When they compared teams that used red as one uniform choice, they found that those teams’ performance was better in red than in other colors.

They attributed the finding to psychological influences. Follow along…it was their conclusion that red, being an indicator of sexual quality among males, and the intensity of the color being a related indicator of the degree of male “dominance” or hormone levels, gave wearers of the color an advantage by instilling feelings of inferiority among opponents (“aw, shucks, we have no chance, look how bright the red is…he must be a real man!”)

But here’s the bad news. Hill and Barton found that the effect was observed only in “symmetrical” contests – those in which the participants were evenly matched. Red won’t make a bad player – or a bad team – good.

But, it can’t hurt.

The article is here (subscription required).