Red defeats Blue

Wearing red increases the chance of victory in sports, say British researchers who clearly do not follow the Cincinnati Reds.

"Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," Dr. Russell Hill and Dr. Robert Barton, researchers in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Durham, wrote in a paper that appears today in the journal Nature.

The research began a year ago with a hunch based on observations in the animal kingdom, where red coloration is often associated with male dominance, Dr. Barton said in an interview. Zebra finches fitted with red leg bands tend to become dominant, while those given blue bands are more submissive. In humans, anger reddens the face, which may send signals of fierceness.

The two researchers studied results of the 2004 Summer Olympics to eliminate the possibility of a home team advantage, and found that contestants in tae kwan do, boxing and wrestling were issued red or blue protective gear at random. "It's almost as if somebody had designed an experiment for us," Dr. Barton said.

Dr. Hill said the evidence of a beneficial effect had emerged, with combatants wearing red winning 6 out of 10 bouts in especially close matches. "Even we were surprised at how consistently the results have been coming out across the range of sports we have looked at," he said.

They have taken a preliminary look at soccer as well, and found that in the Euro 2004 international soccer tournament, the five teams that wore predominantly red shirts did better.

This does not mean that a bad team can reverse its fortunes by wearing red, Dr. Barton said. The study applies only to closely matched competitors. "If you're hopeless," he said, "then wearing red isn't going to make you start winning."

In London, a representative of William Hill, a leading betting company, called the study "absolute rubbish." "There is no such thing as equally matched opponents in any human activity," and there are too many individual factors to pronounce a trait like color decisive, the representative, Graham Sharpe, said in an e-mail message.

Dr. Barton acknowledged that the work might not hold up under further analysis. "All scientific results are a bit provisional, of course," he said.