Paris – Wearing red gives such an advantage in sport that it may need to be regulated in order to ensure that matches are fair, a team of scientists say.<\/p>\n
Anthropologists at the University of Durham, northeastern England, looked at the outcome of contests in four disciplines in the 2004 Olympic Games – boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling – where competitors were randomly assigned red or blue outfits.<\/p>\n
Contestants wearing red won 55 percent of the matches, compared to those wearing blue.<\/p>\n
Out of 21 rounds in these competitions, 16 were won by those wearing red.<\/p>\n
The red advantage prevailed across weight classes, too. Nineteen of 29 classes had more red winners than blue.<\/p>\n
The scientists believe red is subliminally associated with aggression and male dominance, and so wearers of that colour may get a hidden advantage.<\/p>\n
In nature, red is linked with the male hormone testosterone.<\/p>\n
In humans, for instance, anger often causes a reddening of the skin to increased blood flow, whereas fear is associated with pallor as the body responds to an external threat.<\/p>\n
The study, authored by Russell Hill and Robert Barton, took a peek at the Euro 2004 football tournament, in which teams wore shirts of different colours in different matches.<\/p>\n
Teams scored more goals and had more wins when they played in red than when they played in other colours.<\/p>\n
In sport, if factors such as strength and skill are equal, “wearing red presumably tips the balance between losing and winning”, the study says.<\/p>\n
Colours have long been known to influence human moods, but this is the first time that they have been confirmed as a factor in sports contests.<\/p>\n
“The implications for regulations governing sporting attire may also be important, “the authors say. “The colour of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.”<\/p>\n
The study appears on Thursday in the weekly British science journal Nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris – Wearing red gives such an advantage in sport that it may need to be regulated in order to ensure that matches are fair, a team of scientists say. Anthropologists at the University of Durham, northeastern England, looked at the outcome of contests in four disciplines in the 2004 Olympic Games – boxing, tae […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-ij","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}