Research into color phycology has raised the question of exactly why and how certain colours elicit certain moods. Does the color blue make people calmer? Does orange have an impact on how energetic you feel and conjure thoughts of the sun? Does a person wearing a black suit appear to have more confidence than a person wearing a brown t-shirt?
Colours clearly have some sort of impact on our mood, despite the fact that the messages they give out are dependent on many variables including background and life experience. Let’s take an extension from that — if color can affect us mentally, can it affect us physically? If our moods are heightened or dampened based on colours, it would make sense that colours could be used as a means to amplify performance in athletics.
Blue is typically associated with calmness and red with aggression. Green often denotes health, and black has connotations of death in many cultures. It has been cited by numerous sources that teams wearing a red sports kit are more successful. But is this always the case?
Let’s analyze the colours of different running clubs. The main purpose of club colours is, at base, to identify runners on the track. For example, the Edinburgh University Hare & Hounds Running Club wear green, whereas the Glasgow University club colours are black and gold.
Colours have been associated with higher rates of accomplishment in other sports. Hill and Barton conducted a study regarding combat sports, and concluded that red had a higher success rate than blue due to red apparently sending a message of aggression and dominance to the opponent. But another study of Judo athletes showed blue contestants had a higher victory rate than those wearing white. According to researchers, the study was not wholly controlled — the blue-kit wearing contestants were seeded as the top 11%. Due to this, even in the loser’s pool, the athletes in blue had competed in one less match, and had had longer rest periods. Another study corrected these variables, and found uniform color had little impact on success.
So, if color doesn’t have an impact on success rates, does the color of an athlete’s kit make any difference at all? Minnpost dug a little deeper into the matter, and found an alternative view on the issue from psychologist Tom Stafford. He suggested that the color of kit didn’t impact the athletes as much as they impacted the referee — and he used studies of digital color manipulation to support this theory, in which referees were shown images with the colours worn by contestants altered. The referees awarded more points to those photoshopped in red kit than in blue. Could it be that the color of sportswear has more of an effect on the people watching than the athletes themselves then?
It does make sense; sports and athletics are watched by audiences who ultimately want entertainment. Perhaps the choice of color in sportswear is less to do with trying to increase the chance of winning, or putting off the opponent, but instead generating a sense of excitement and energy in the crowd watching.
That doesn’t mean that color psychology and athletics don’t mix. But instead of looking at what we wear when we go for a run or perform sports, perhaps we should be considering our surroundings instead. Swiss running website On suggests that the real power of color psychology in athletics comes from the colours of a runner’s surroundings. The example posed is that running in a gray room may be uninspiring and clinical, whereas running in a colourful room might perk the athlete up more.
This theory could also be applied to outdoor running vs indoor running – for example, running under a clear blue sky on the green grass would probably be a much happier experience than running indoors on a treadmill. The sight of these colours could make for a happier athlete who, in turn, may perform better. Colour psychology can certainly be deployed in the world of athletics. But if a team or athlete wins where another doesn’t, it’s unlikely because he or she chose to wear a red shirt.
Sources:
https://phys.org/news/2008-02-athletic-uniform-winners-losers.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/6097954/Why-teams-in-red-win-more.html
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/health/sport-and-fitness/sport/the-colour-success-can-uniform-colour-impact-on-team-success
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04306
https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/08/does-color-olympians-clothing-affect-competition-outcomes/