A 2005 study by scientists Russell Hill and Robert Barton at Durham University found that wearing red increased one's chances of success in some sports. But two decades later, the same researchers have returned to the topic with a new study finding that the bright color doesn't seem to provide the competitive advantage it once did.
The new study, published Dec. 28 in the Scientific Reports journal, outlined how victory trends have shifted in relation to the color that combat athletes wear in their matches. Specifically, they looked at close-contact sports like boxing, taekwondo, and wrestling, where athletes were assigned to wear either red or blue clothing.
The team examined results from seven Summer Olympic Games from 1996 to 2020 and nine World Boxing Championships from 2005 to 2021 for a total of more than 6,500 individual competition outcomes. They then honed in on close finishes where wearing red could've made the difference between winning and losing.
In the end, they found that before 2005, 56 percent of closely matched victories went to those wearing red. But by 2020, that perceived advantage had essentially disappeared. "Using meta-analytic techniques, we found 50.5 percent wins by red for the overall data, which was not a statistically significant bias," they noted, adding that close contests produced a similarly non-statistically significant result of 51.5 percent red wins.
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As for why this purported edge seemingly disappeared, the team surmised that rule changes that allow less room for interpretation and the implementation of new technology has helped combat any referee bias.
Prior to 2005, combat sport referees had a bigger role in assigning points; by contrast, scoring today is much more backed by technology rather than solely human judgment. Taekwondo, for example, implemented an electronic scoring system for the body in 2012 and head in 2016 as well as an instant video replay starting in the 2012 Olympic Games.
"In conclusion, there is only supporting evidence for a red advantage for close contests in the pre-2005 data. In fact, in a complex sports environment, with many different types of stimuli impacting on competitors, any hypothesized red effect is fragile, and unlikely to manifest except in closely matched contests," the scientists wrote. "Nevertheless, rule changes since the publication of the 2005 findings have likely helped to minimize the effect by reducing subjectivity on the part of the referee and therefore ensure a more level playing field in sport."
That should come as good news for athletes who know red isn't their color.
