Wear Red to Win at Sports

The color of sportswear has been shown to influence the outcome for several different sports.

Since 1947, English football teams wearing red shirts have been champions more often than expected on the basis of the proportion of clubs playing in red. Across All league divisions, red teams had the best home record, with significant difference in both percentage of maximum points achieved and mean position in the home league ranking. A matched-pair analysis of red and non-red wearing teams in eight English cities shows significantly better performance of red teams over a 55 year period. These effects on long-term success in team sports confirm that wearing red enhances performance in a variety of competitive contexts. (1) Sport psychologists at the University of Munster, Germany showed video clips of bouts to 42 experienced taekwondo referees. They then played the same clips again digitally manipulated so that the clothing colors were changed. The result? In close matches, the scoring also changed , with red competitors awarded an average of 13 percent more points than when they were dressed in blue, reports Daniel Elkan. (2)

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By contrast, people have strongly negative unconscious reactions to black uniforms. Teams with black uniforms are overwhelmingly likely to rank near the top of their leagues in penalties. On those rare occasions when a team switched to black uniforms from another color, the switch was accompanied by a dramatic increase in penalties. (3) All five black-clad teams in the National Football League received more than the league-average number of penalty yards in every season but one between 1970 and 1986. In the National Hockey League, all three teams that wore black through the same period got more than the average number of penalty minutes in every season. The really intriguing thing is that these teams were penalized just as heavily when they wore their alternate uniforms- white with black trim-which is just what you would expect from research on emotion and judgment. The black uniform slaps a negative emotional label on the team and that label sticks even when the team isn’t wearing black. (4) Even more direct evidence that the color of a team’s uniform is connected to how often its players are penalized is obtained by comparing (a) the number of penalty minutes logged by the Pittsburgh Penguins during the first 44 games of the 1979-1980 season when they wore blue uniforms, with (b) the corresponding number during the final 35 games when they wore black. During the first 44 games they average 8 penalty minutes per game; after switching to black uniforms this average increased to 12 minutes, a 50 percent jump. Does the black uniform mean referees perceive the team more negatively and therefore judge them more strictly than they otherwise would? Or does the black uniform inspire players to be more aggressive? Mark Frank and Thomas Gilovich note, “Subjects who wore black uniforms showed a marked increase in intended aggression relative to those wearing white uniforms. This suggests that the excessive penalties amassed by black-uniformed teams in professional sports stem from two distinct processes—their own aggressiveness and harsher treatment by the referees.” (3) So, what is so special about red? One possibility is that red is simply easier to see than other colors. In common with other primates, humans have a trichromatic visual system which probably evolved to allow us to easily see red (therefore ripe) fruit. However, most researchers believe that red directly affects how you perceive the wearer of that color. In nature, red is often used to signal dominance and aggression, and in humans this is reinforced by cultural symbols such as warning signs and stop signals. (2) References

1. M. J. Attrill, et al., “Red shirt color is associated with long-term team success in English football,” Journal of Sports Science, 26(6), 577, 2008
2. Daniel Elkan, “Winners wear red,” New Scientist, 203, 45, August 2009
3. Mark G. Frank and Thomas Gilovich, “The dark side of self-and social perception: black uniforms and aggression in professional sports,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 74, 1988
4. Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, (Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 2008), 355