In Case You Missed It . . .
Wearing Red Is a Recipe for Winning, British Anthropologists Find
At the Athens Olympics, wrestlers wearing red, such as Kazakhstan's Georgiy Tsurtsumia, left, who beat American Rulon Gardner, were more successful.
(By Yves Herman -- Reuters)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
If winning is everything, British anthropologists have some advice: Wear red.
Their survey of four sports at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens shows competitors were more likely to win their contests if they wore red uniforms or red body armor.
"Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," report Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton of the University of Durham in England. Their findings are in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Red coloration is associated with aggression in many animals. Often it is sexually selected so that scarlet markings signal male dominance.
Just think of the red stripes on the scowling face of the male mandrill, Africa's largest monkey. But red is not exclusively a male trait. The female black widow spider is venomous and displays a menacing red dot on her abdomen.
Similarly, the color's effect also may subconsciously intimidate opponents in athletic contests, especially when the athletes are equal in skill and strength, the researchers suggest.
In their survey, the anthropologists analyzed the results of four one-on-one contact sports at the Summer Games: boxing, taekwondo, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling.
In those events, the athletes were randomly assigned red protective gear and other sportswear.
Athletes wearing red gear won more often in 16 of 21 rounds of competition in all four events.
The effect was the same regardless of weight classes, too: 19 of 29 classes had more red winners, and only four rounds had more blue winners.
The red effect also might come into play in team sports.
A preliminary analysis of the Euro 2004 soccer tournament found that five teams scored more goals and won more often when they wore shirts that were predominantly red, as opposed to blue or white jerseys.
-- From News Services
