Winners Tend to Be in the Red, Study Says
For athletes seeking a performance enhancer, two British anthropologists recommend an entirely legal stimulant: red uniforms.
An analysis of four events at the 2004 Olympics showed that competitors wearing red were more likely to emerge victorious, the researchers reported today in the journal Nature.
"We were pretty bowled over when we looked at the data," said Robert Barton, who wrote the paper with Russell Hill, his colleague at the University of Durham in England.
Barton and Hill specialize in studying the role of color in nonhuman primate societies. Red is the color of male dominance in several other species, they said.
For example, in mandrill monkeys, a male that takes over a group quickly develops red markings that make his authority known to all.
But little is known about the role of red in the human social order. The anthropologists wanted to test whether red could influence competition between humans.
Barton and Hill saw the 2004 Summer Games in Athens as the perfect opportunity.
In four sports -- boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling -- competitors were randomly assigned red or blue uniforms. All the competitors were male.
In each sport, athletes in red won more often. Overall, the red-clad competitor won 54.9% of the time, or 242 out of 441 total matchups, the study showed.
To make sure other factors were not at work, the researchers examined matches in all 29 weight classes and in all 21 rounds of competition, from the opening contests to the finals.
In 19 weight classes and 16 rounds, there were more red winners, they found.
The researchers realized that the most powerful factor in a competition was ability.
Barton said that wearing a red uniform can't tip a contest when one athlete is clearly stronger or more skilled.
"If you're hopeless, wearing red isn't going to make you a winner," he said.
But the analysis suggested red did have the power to sway an even match.
To check their analysis, they looked at the closest matches -- those with the lowest margin of victory.
They assumed that these were matches between equal competitors. In these cases, red won at an even higher rate, more than 60%.
Barton and Hill also looked to see whether red had the same role in a team sport. In the Euro 2004 soccer tournament, five teams wore two uniforms -- one red and one not red -- over the course of the competition.
