Sporting contests Seeing red? Putting sportswear in context

Arising from: R. A. Hill & R. A. Barton Nature 435, 293 (200510.1038/435293a); R. A. Hill & R. A. Barton replyThere is a Corrigendum (11 May 2006) associated with this document.The shirt colour worn by sportsmen can affect the behaviour of the competitors, but Hill and Barton show that it ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature 2005-10, Vol.437 (7063), p.E10-E10
Main Authors: Rowe, Candy, Harris, Julie M, Roberts, S. Craig
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal species
Bias
Color
Competitive Behavior - physiology
Greece
Humans
Male
Models, Biological
Photic Stimulation
Reproducibility of Results
Sports - physiology
Sports - psychology
Vision, Ocular - physiology
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Summary:Arising from: R. A. Hill & R. A. Barton Nature 435, 293 (200510.1038/435293a); R. A. Hill & R. A. Barton replyThere is a Corrigendum (11 May 2006) associated with this document.The shirt colour worn by sportsmen can affect the behaviour of the competitors, but Hill and Barton show that it may also influence the outcome of contests. By analysing the results of men's combat sports from the Athens 2004 Olympics, they found that more matches were won by fighters wearing red outfits than by those wearing blue; they suggest that red might confer success because it is a sign of dominance in many animal species and could signal aggression in human contests. Here we use another data set from the 2004 Olympics to show that similar winning biases occur in contests in which neither contestant wears red, indicating that a different mechanism may be responsible for these effects.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/nature04306