A bull, tough and attentive, is released from captivity. Just 50 meters away, a matador unfurls a bright red cape from his uniform. He waves it at the snorting bull. The beast kicks up some dirt and charges, enraged with pent up anger. Bull fighting is a well-known link to the color red and aggression. Is it the color of the cape generating the bull’s aggressive response? Nope, in fact, bulls are color blind – he is simply reacting to the wave of the flag!
The phrase, “seeing red” is an old English reference to an emotional charge of aggression or upset. Does seeing red really generate an innate aggressive response? Also, could it create an ergogenic affect in sports? Some say, it does – and moreover, they claim it creates an unfair advantage in competition.
Color is everywhere; there is no escaping its presence. Researchers have routinely explored how color theory affects our daily lives and emotions. For instance, red is commonly regarded as the most emotionally intense color. Red can trigger feelings of confrontation or on the other hand, love. It’s frequently used to display warnings and alerts; red attracts attention. A 1977 study by Ann Bourgeois and George Cerbus examined innate color-mood associations using young children. They demonstrated how people begin to associate red with anger early in life. Color association does not seem to be a learned response but rather something built so deep into the subconscious that it can alter biological responses – based on evolutionary models.
Some researchers believe wearing a red uniform could change the outcome of a sporting event. Russel Hill and Robert Barton published a study in Nature, in an international science journal, in May 2005. According to their research, wearing red “can influence the outcome of physical contests in humans — across a range of sports.” They analyzed the results of combat sports – boxing, tae kwon do and wrestling – at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Each sport was played with red versus blue opponents and the study focused only on competitors that were most evenly matched. The authors cited significantly more than half of the winners wore red outfits. According to Hill and Barton, athletes who wore red outfits were more likely to beat those wearing blue. They conclude that “wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning. These results indicate not only that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of human response to colors, but also that the color of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.”
Candy Rowe and colleagues rebutted their findings in the same journal, from the same Olympiad. Rowe studied Judo uniforms; a sport wear red is not worn. In this study, it was demonstrated that wearing blue presented an advantage over white and visibility plays a key factor in how color is perceived in sports – white is easier to see.
Hill and Barton later defended their theories in favor of behavioral and biological explanations. They further explained their results as: “Red coloration is a sexually selected, testosterone-dependent signal of male quality in a variety of animals, and in some non-human species a male’s dominance can be experimentally increased by attaching artificial red stimuli. Here we show that a similar effect can influence the outcome of physical contests in humans.”
In 2005, A.C. Hackney conducted a study to examine testosterone responses of men wearing red-colored apparel in a competitive environment, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. He demonstrated that competition in itself raises testosterone levels – not the color red. “The wearing of red-colored apparel had no affects on the testosterone responses to an exercise bout simulating a competition,” Hackney’s research concluded.
Whether red generates an ergogenic effect is still up to debate. It is generally accepted that color does stimulate changes in emotion, but are these alterations strong enough to be considered unfair in sports?
Bourgeois, Ann M. and George Cerbus. “Color Associations to Mood Stories in First Grade Boys,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1977. Vol 45, Pgs 1051-1056.
R.A. Hill and R.A. Barton, “Red enhances human performance in contests,” Nature, 435:293, May 19, 2005.
A.C. Hackney, “Testosterone and human performance: influence of the color red,” European Journal of Applied Physiology, 330-333, Nov. 11, 2005.
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Perhaps wearing red makes your opponent more aggressive and this in turn makes them more likely to get too enraged and lose the battle at whatever sport is being played!
Just an idea but it could be true