Comments on: BBC Future column: Wear red, win gold?

By: Richard Kunert

Richard Kunert — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:55:08 +0000

I am a bit skeptical of the neat explanation you give for the red advantage effect.

First of all, red is perhaps a marker of dominance in our evolutionary past, but could also go as a marker for danger if you reverse perspectives. Furthermore, our cultural past is also littered with red=danger. So, even if red=dominance doesn’t hold, alternative explanations could be found without referring to referees.

Secondly, well controlled social psychological explanations using Poker as a game with easily quantifiable behavioural styles supports the player-centred explanation. Felden et al. (2012) found that playing against red Poker chips was intimidating and that playing with red Poker chips was stimulating. In each situation initial bets in ambiguous game openings were placed accordingly. Needless to say that no referees are present in Poker.

I guess the visibility explanation has some value and so does the referee explanation. However, whether it is time to drop a player-based explanation is doubtful.

More on the same topic:
http://brainsidea.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/red-in-the-head-psychology-predicts-portugal-to-win-euro-2012/

Reference:

Felden, S.V. Ten, Baas, M., Shalvi, S., Preenen, P.T.Y., & Dreu, C.K.W. De (2012). In competitive interaction displays of red increase actors’ competitive approach and perceivers’ withdrawel Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.04.004

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:41:02 +0000

For years in watching football, the team wearing the black jerseys were always perceived to be the most aggressive and interestingly enough as I recall, when wearing black jerseys they would tend to collect more penalties in that game!

By: amelie

amelie — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:09:25 +0000

That is a good example of media errors too. I was wondering about the study done by (Cornell?) about black supposedly being perceived as more aggressive because players received more penalties.

Does this still translate as strongly as it would for our primate ancestors? I’d think at some point the color influence would become less of an issue in an artificial world.

I know that domestic cats have hardly evolved at all in behavior but they’re much more closely related to their wild ancestors.

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By: James V. Kohl

James V. Kohl — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:22:18 +0000

In other vertebrates, the color red is associated with the nutrient chemical appeal of potential foods. The nutrient chemicals metabolize to pheromones that control reproduction, which is why the visual association of red color with reproductive fitness exemplifies the epigenetic effects of both nutrient chemicals and pheromones. No other mammals make any non-olfactory/pheromonal association with red color. The associations with visual input are conditioned to occur in the context of odors. The ability of psychologists to convince some people that visual input (color) is the direct cause of any receptor-mediated event that effects hormones that affect behavior attests to an overall ignorance of biologically based cause, which is the epigenetic effects of sensory input from the environment on hormone secretion that affects behavior.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:36:16 +0000

I’ve wondered about this before (but never very deeply) particularly when watching football. It always looked to me that the team playing in red seemed to have more players on their side. So much so that I used to count them and even when I’d satisfied myself this was not the case. It still looked like there were more red players on the pitch.

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Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:09:33 +0000

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By: Cam

Cam — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:56:54 +0000

Sounds to me like the first study also gives a ‘classic warning’ about the dangers of interpreting correlations – that a third confounding or unmeasured variable may underlie the relationship between the two measured variables; and in interpreting the direction of the relationship.

Could the fact that China (who wear a red uniform) have dominated many Olympic sports have influenced the proportion of winners wearing red? (or does the fact they wear red explain why China are dominant?)