Have you ever wondered why and how certain colours evoke certain feelings?
Studies into the topic of colour psychology have raised this exact question. Does the colour red make people more aggressive? Does blue make people more subdued? If a person is dressed in a navy suit, do they seem more sure of themselves than someone wearing a plain white shirt?
Although the way in which we respond to colours is dependent on other variables such as culture, we clearly associate them with feelings and as a result, they do have an impact on our mood. Let’s take an extension from that — if colour 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.
Green tends to be associated with peace and red with anger. Yellow often denotes happiness, 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 analyse 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.
In other sports, colours have been linked to higher success rates. 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 colour had little impact on success.
If colour doesn’t have any impact on sporting success, does it 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 colour of kit didn’t impact the athletes as much as they impacted the referee — and he used studies of digital colour 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 colour of sportswear has more of an effect on the people watching than the athletes themselves then?
Sports games and athletic events are typically watched for entertainment purposes, so it makes sense. Perhaps the choice of colour 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 to say that sports and colour psychology don’t go together. 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 colour psychology in athletics comes from the colours of a runner’s surroundings. The example posed is that running in a grey 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.
