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.

In red, each team scored more goals, the researchers said.

Is it time for sports to ban red to make competitions fair?

“That has to be up to the regulators,” Barton said.

Anecdotal evidence does not present a convincing argument for or against red.

It is true that Tiger Woods wears a red shirt on Sundays -- the day of the final round in most tournaments -- to honor his Thai ancestry. In Thailand, red is the color of victory.

But not a trace of red can be found in the uniforms of many historically successful teams -- including the Los Angeles Lakers, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees.

And sure, the Boston Red Sox won the most recent World Series, but they had to wait 86 years.

Many teams in red seem to do a lot of losing as well as winning.

In 2001, the Anaheim Angels struggled in periwinkle uniforms. The next year they unveiled red duds.

“We didn’t do any scientific studies of clubs that win, but red stands out,” said Tim Mead, a spokesman, explaining the redesign.

The team won the World Series that year. The next year, they returned to the doldrums.

Barton is mystified by his findings.

He surmised that, similar to what occurs in the animal world, perhaps red intimidates competitors.

Or maybe it gives strength to the wearer, he said.

Manfred Milinski, a zoologist at the Max Planck Institute of Limnology in Ploen, Germany, said it made perfect sense that red was power.

“If it had been any other color, I would have been surprised,” Milinski said.

He studies a fish species called the red stickleback. It is green for most of the year, but males turn red during the mating season.

In experiments on finches, scientists have been able to manipulate the pecking order by marking some birds with red.

The biology of red is poorly understood in humans, but Barton said there was no reason its effect should be limited to sports.

“There is a possibility this is operating in other social and political spheres,” he said.

Red, of course, has long been associated with power and aggression.

“It’s not a color for the meek, let’s be honest,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Republican political consultant in Los Angeles.

He said he often advised political candidates to wear red ties. Red shows up well on television and, he said, conveys a sense of authority.

Still, red didn’t help Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, who wore a red tie in all three debates during the last campaign. President Bush wore a red tie in the final debate, after choosing blue for the first two.