A Red State Advantage?

by Betsy Robinson

Ever since Nancy Reagan, women in government have known they can get more attention if they wear red dresses to political meetings. Red is in our lexicon: The Red Badge of Courage. "They caught him red-handed." Those who see auras say the first chakra, which is said to indicate our ability to survive, is red. We redden when we get angry. Well, now we learn that referees assign more points to competitors dressed in red.

In a study from the University of Munster, Germany, (Psychological Science, August 2008), researchers presented 42 experienced tae kwon do referees with two videos of blue- and red-clad competitors sparring. The videos were identical except that in the second one the red athletes appeared to be wearing blue and vice versa. The referees were asked to score the performance of each competitor, red or blue, after each video. When the competitors appeared to be wearing red, they were awarded an average of 13 percent more points than the blue competitors, even though every athlete was presented in both colors at some point. What's more, points awarded seemed to increase when blue athletes were digitally transformed into reds and seemed to decrease when the reds changed to blues.

This research seems to confirm a 2005 study by researchers at the University of Durham that discovered that when sports opponents were equally matched, the team dressed in red was more likely to win. But there's more:

The 2005 study was inspired by earlier primate research at the University of Cambridge in England, which found that among large African monkeys, red coloration gives males an advantage when it comes to mating. Humans, apes, and Old World monkeys have trichromatic vision, which allows them to distinguish between blue, green, and red. Although our red-color vision most likely evolved for food foraging, it has serious social implications. According to a study published in American Naturalist by Ohio University researchers Andre Fernandez and Molly Morris, once primates began selecting red food, it drove the evolution of red skin and hair through sexual selection, which in turn affected ongoing mate selection. The researchers found that the more social trichromats are, the more red coloring they show.

So does this mean we should wear red to enhance all of our endeavors? No! Context is everything, according to a University of Rochester and University of Munich study finding that test takers who saw even a hint of red before being tested associated the color with mistakes and failures and did poorly on their subsequent tests. Message: Enjoy the spectrum.