Athletic colors may shade results
Feb 17, 2009
N.C. State’s latest sports marketing theme, while new to Raleigh, reprises a 30-year-old slogan from the days of Shirley “Red” Wilson, the only modern Duke football coach fired after posting a winning season (6-5 in 1982). Wilson even beat North Carolina in his final game, and still got fired.
The charm of “Red means go,” if it has a charm, is that it confounds everyday experience, in which the color is most often associated with traffic commands that order us to stop immediately.
In fact, scientists are intrigued by the effects of color on human behavior and feeling; color psychology is an established branch of study, and presumably of particular interest to marketers and the like. “It’s not like ESP research,” said Eric Stone, an assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest who specializes in judgment and decision making. “It’s not like it’s really out there.”
Of course North Carolinians are well aware strong emotions and ideas can be evoked by certain colors, and by the folks who pledge allegiance to them. Newcomers to the state learn the importance of color-coding quickly and emphatically, particularly in regard to blue and red.
“When I first got here I thought it was unusual, let’s put it that way, that colors could evoke such unbridled joy or the wrath of people,” said Jim Valvano, a New Yorker who coached at N.C. State from the 1981 through 1990 seasons. “I understand it now. I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be amazed by it.”
Even if you don’t root for the Wolfpack, or a blue-garbed team like Duke or North Carolina, their colors are imbedded in the vocabulary of our lives, often with a judgmental twist.
Dangers are red-flagged. Editing changes or bad grades are red-penciled. Neighborhoods spurned for loans are red-lined. When we’re mad we see red. When we’re sad we feel blue. Blue-sky thinking stretches our minds. Aristocrats are blue bloods. First-place awards and elite commissions are blue-ribbon. Even our politics are parsed along similar lines, with analysts tabbing some states as red (Republican) and others as blue (Democrat).
According to scientists, our minds respond to these colors in more subtle ways than suggesting colloquial expressions or evoking rivalries and political divisions.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests, reported earlier this month on the Web site of Science magazine, to see whether cognitive performance varied when 600 people were shown red or blue. Performing tasks displayed against a red background, study participants demonstrated better recall and attention to detail such as remembering words. (“Go to hell, Carolina,” perhaps?) Blue groups did better in imaginative use of bricks or creating toys from shapes. (Cameron Crazies, anyone?)
“If you’re talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like proofreading skills, then a red color should be used,” one of the British Columbia researchers told The New York Times. Conversely, for “a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new solution to fight child obesity or teenage smoking, then you should get people into a blue room.” (The Dean Dome sounds perfect.)
As always, there are sports applications too. Anthropologists at Durham University in England studied 2004 Olympians who were supposedly evenly-matched in tao kwon do, boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and freestyle wrestling. They found that athletes wearing red defeated blue-clad opponents 60 percent of the time. The researchers suggested “that red, for athletes as for animals, subconsciously symbolizes dominance,” Pam Belluck wrote in the Times.
Wolfpack fans will of course claim this is not news to them.
Another study published in August 2008 in the journal Psychological Science reported a study in which 42 referees graded tae kwon do matches from the 2004 Olympics. The only variable was the color of contestants’ uniforms, which were digitally altered so the same athletes alternately appeared in red and blue. “Competitors dressed in red are awarded more points than competitors dressed in blue, even when their performance is identical," concluded researchers at the University of Munster in Germany.
But Andrew Elliot, a University of Rochester professor, said a color’s brightness or shade could influence observers’ reactions. Elliott told HealthDay News that red may intimidate opponents more than it boosts the performance of those wearing the color. In some research, "the people in blue are seeing red and they're doing worse,” he said. “It's not that wearing red leads to better performance."
Elliot had previously conducted his own study that found people shown red covers did not fare as well on I.Q. tests as those given other hues. Tar Heel supporters would have told him as much.
For ACC fans, the implications of this research are intriguing. If European scientists are correct, and those in red get the benefit of the doubt when judgment is applied to athletic competition, perhaps N.C. State fans can quit griping about officials’ calls. Besides the fact it rarely helps, there may be no need to push the issue.
Or, maybe UNC and Duke fans should worry about their teams being punked -- mentally dominated -- by the meanies in red, as the University of Rochester’s Elliot would have it.
Except the record doesn’t show that. Not in men’s basketball, anyway. Duke has won 36 of the 43 meetings with N.C. State since Valvano’s 1990 departure, including a 73-56 verdict at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Jan. 20. UNC has won 29 of 40 since Valvano left, including a 93-76 victory at Raleigh on Jan. 31.
Nationally, seven of the last 10 men’s champions wore blue as their primary color. The only red champ in the past decade was Maryland in 2002.
Of course it’s possible neither red nor blue is important when it comes to basketball results. Visitors wear their school colors. Home teams, which in the ACC win at least 60 percent of their games, dress predominantly in white. That’s the color stereotypically worn by the good guys.
This brings to mind a comment made by Stone, the Wake professor. “You have to remember with a lot of these effects, even when they’re significant, they’re very small,” he said.
