Uniforms can color judgment when referees see red

By Belinda Goldsmith

BEIJING (Reuters) - Red might be more than just a lucky color for Chinese athletes competing at the Olympics.

A study has found choosing the color red for a uniform in competitive sports can affect the referee's split-second decision-making ability and even promote a scoring bias.

Red is thought to bring good luck for Chinese and is the color of items ranging from packets of lucky money handed out at Lunar New Year to lanterns and wedding dresses.

And Tiger Woods famously wears red on the last day of a golf tournament for luck.

Now psychologists Norbert Hagemann, Bernd Strauss and Jan Leissing from Germany's University of Muenster have found referees tended to assign more points to taekwondo competitors dressed in red than those dressed in blue.

The study, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, was conducted by the researchers presenting 42 taekwondo referees with videos of blue- and red-clad competitors sparring.

The two sets of clips were identical except that the colors were reversed in the second set so the red athlete appeared to be wearing blue and vice versa.

After each video the referees were asked to score the performance of each competitor, red or blue.