Red a winning color, researchers report

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="5">Red a winning color, researchers report</font></p> </b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted May 27, 2005<br> Courtesy <i>Nature</i><br> and World Science staff<br> </font> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <b> <br> </b> </font> <b><font size="2" face="Arial">“Come on you reds!” is a cry heard at football fields throughout of Britain. But those dressed in scarlet may need less help than you might think. A recent survey suggests athletes are more likely to triumph if they are wearing red.<br> <br> Russell Hill and Robert Barton of the University of Durham, U.K. studied four one-on-one sports in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games—boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling—in which combatants were randomly assigned either red or blue clothing or body protectors. <br> <br> Those wearing red, but otherwise matched in skill to their blue-wearing opponents, were more likely to win, the researchers reported in a Brief Communication in the May 19 issue of the research journal <i>Nature</i>.<br> <br> The researchers pointed out that red is linked with high testosterone, fitness and aggression in animals—an effect that might also operate in humans and subconsciously put an opponent on the back foot.</font></b> </p> </body>