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The Red Team Wins
Voltageaav writes "Recent studies indicate that in both First Person Shooters and even athletic competitions, wearing red gives you an advantage. It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry." Of course the Blue Team loses — as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.
The Boston Red Sox.
Especially if you're playing on Goldrush (last graph is wins per team per map
When I first played UT04, sometimes I would wear red, sometimes blue, but I ALWAYS got pwnd!
When I got much better, I pwnd teh noobs, and got pwnd by teh 1337, whether red OR blue. If this finding was really true, wouldn't someone have noticed it by now?
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18625005.300
"... said the reason was most likely that the color red may act as a psychological distractor for men, possibly because men flush and turn red when they're angry."
How did they know the players were men? They could have been... oh, wait
Red shirts!
I'm in a corp in Eve Online, a heavy player v player orientated spaceship game.
With Eve, a hostile ship that is attacking you is displayed on screen, and also on the overview as a flashing red bar - the flashing red showing that the enemy ship has you targeted and is activating modules upon you with hostile intent.
One of the first things we do with newcomers to our corp/Eve is tell them to change the overview colour of a hostile ship from a flashing red to a solid green.
The change has had noticable effect. Before people would see the red and get an adrenaline boost, often resulting in them freezing for long enough to lose the battle. When seeing a solid green stating a metaphorical 'go go go!' as opposed to a red screaming 'Danger!' the newcomers perform better and freeze less often.
Too much TOS.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
"Da red wunz go fasta!"
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
But Church is going to be pissed!
This must be why the BSoD signifies failure.
...playing airsoft. Do you think they sell bright red camo?
It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry."
I'm black, I can't turn red you insensitive clod.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
This is of course very unfair. In the future everyone should be required to wear a pair of monochrome contact lenses or a small device on the optic nerve that randomly changes the color signals from the eyes.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
Oh great, yet another reason to fear China.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
I think its more like any team coached by Jose Mourinho wins, no metter if it is blue, green or naked. I mean ManU, Liverpool and Arsenal (all red) looked very angry all the time, but his *blue* team won everything, every time.
839*929
Anyone who has ever had a girlfriend KNOWS that women flush and turn red! And NOT just when they are angry!
Thank you Dave Raggett
...if you are my opponent in Day Of Defeat (I'll keep the camo) ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
The results would have been the other way around if they hadn't stacked the deck by removing Star Trek crewmen from consideration.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Suck it, Blue!
--Grif
he always wears a red shirt for the fourth round... might be something to this story... or maybe tiger woods is just that good, regardless of the shirt.
Their redshirt-wearing hockey team won the Stanley Cup, didn't they?
Lousy article. You submit the Detroit Lions as evidence. I submit the New York Giants as evidence of your arguments failure. And I further submit the Arizona Cardinals as evidence that this article is a bunch of crap...
Red is easier to spot. Bang!
the olympics this time round...
This might explain:
The Detroit Red Wings, the closest thing to a winning "dynasty" in the days of free-agency hockey. (4 Stanley Cups in 11 years). (Red & White hockey sweaters.)
And the Detroit Lions... perennial losers, only a handful of playoff appearances in 40 years, and no chance of winning anything anytime in the forseeable future. (Blue & Grey [and black] jerseys)
Or it could be decades of lackluster mis-management by the Lions owners (the Ford family), and a passionate winning attitude from the competent Red Wings owners (the Illich family).
Get off my lawn.
Enough said.
The implicit assumption seems to be that good players don't prefer to be on the red team.
Maybe winners just like the color red.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Maybe the Red Wings' red gloves did them some good. let's review the play-off scores: Sat., May 24 Pittsburgh 0 Detroit 4; Mon., May 26 Pittsburgh 0 Detroit 3; Wed., May 28 Detroit 2 Pittsburgh 3; Sat., May 31 Detroit 2 Pittsburgh 1; Mon., Jun 2 Pittsburgh 4 Detroit 3; Wed., Jun 4 Detroit 3 Pittsburgh 2;
So, to look at what this study actually tells us, we can use some simple statistics to determine what range of probabilities we're 99.999% sure the true probability of red winning lies within. (This is example #3: "The coin is tossed...").
And the answer is, given 1,347 trials (games) with a 55% red-wins outcome, the true value lies somewhere between 49% and 61% (inclusive).
So we're 99.999% sure that the results have not ruled out the null hypothesis: that wearing red has no effect at all.
There may be a real effect here, but more work is needed! Until then, Occam's razor selects the simpler explanation: there's no effect.
| What, you were expecting
-O_O- +---- something witty?
Its a combination of both red and blue, and we have all witnessed what it has done for the Minnesota Vikings...
What do you call a Minnesota Viking with a Super Bowl ring?
Thief....
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
3-0 / 4-1
Sidney Crosby cockiness was the Red Wings advantage.
I was expecting the announcers to get out on the ice and start blowing him during time-outs.
As an aside, people also turn red when they are embarrassed or drunk, so wouldn't the psychological effect cancel itself out?"
Funny...I remember when I bought a red Corvette...that everyone told me not to get red, because it would make your insurance higher. I'd heard that all my life.
I called State Farm and asked them if color mattered as to my insurance rate. Nope.
What matters is your driving record, your sex, the price of the car (repairs), and it seems these days strangely enough...your credit rating?!?!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Of course the Blue Team loses, as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.
The Dallas Cowboys wear blue and they have the highest overall winning percentage all-time (includes playoffs) and even though they've only been around since 1960 they have the most playoff wins of any NFL team. (32 playoff wins, 5 of them Super Bowl wins)
The Bears has the most total wins. (677) Of course they've been around since the birth of dirt!
In the late 1980s, I had the pleasure of observing some Red Team training activities at Fort Irwin in California. This is the US Army's premiere force-on-force training environment. They have a remarkably competent Opposing Force unit, and they're quite skilled at using non-US equipment and tactics against the visiting Blue Team battalions. Yes, this is big stuff - training at the battalion and brigade level.
"Red Team Wins," and they generally do.
Losers for a long time to almost any other color...
no comment
I can't remember there where and when but there is someone out there pushing to have emergency exits signs and lights changed from red color to a green color for this very same reason. When we see a red traffic light we stop. In North America (and I assume several other continents) stop signs are also red. In an emergency the few seconds of hesitation possibly generated by a red light instead of a green light might cost lives. It was an interesting subject matter and seems to make sense. Wonder if we'll even see green exit signs in our near future?
Th French (Les Bleus) lost from the Dutch yesterday in the European soccxr game.
Of course, they've never exactly lost, either. Maybe both Red and Blue are just too incompetent to win.
One of my high school colors was red. In nearly every athletic sport, we lost (excluding basketball) *every* *single* *game* with very few exceptions. " It's speculated that this distracts the other team slightly due to the psychological aspect of people turning red when angry." The coach was a big, angry guy. And he turned red a lot. And we still lost.
Website coming soon.
I am unaffected by this "red means angry" distraction. I can't see red; I'm colorblind.
Wait, is that why the red team is completely invisible to me? No wonder they keep winning.
The blue team, on the other hand, stands out quite nicely.
Don't put advice in your sig.
Can someone tell me if 55% is actually something statistically relevant for only 1,500 trials? (How much better is this than a coin flip?)
In particular, the results of the 2000 presidential election.
Why can't Democratic states be "red states"?
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
... I have noticed this trend. I play better when I'm on the red team and now I guess I know why. Whenever I am on blue team, however, I have the player skins of red team set to blue. This offers consistency no matter what team I end up joining.
Aggressive people are more likely to choose to wear red. It tends to happen in any competitive environment, including the workplace. Nothing new here.
They should try switching the perceived colours of multiplayer teams and observe the result. For example, some games always show the enemy as red and friendlies as blue. Reversing this might have a noticeable effect on the game play and consequently lead the way to isolating the effect of team colour on our behaviour.
prepare the survey weasels.
I remember reading somewhere that different colours are processed at different rates by the visual cortex, with blue being handled faster than red.
Here is an interesting looking paper on the subject, "If, however, stimuli possess good chromatic selectivity and minimize achromatic intrusions, then there is a strong dependence of RT [reaction time] on stimulus color" -- alas it seems like red invokes better reaction times going by a quick scan of it, but it is interesting that red-green and blue-yellow have distinct processing paths that can be measured.
well I guess this puts an end to red vs Blue (and all it's spin-offs)
that's what they're betting on...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And guess that's why the Horde always win in the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft (at least on my server)
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
The Quake3 mods CPMA and OSP have this stuff since ages. Most people chose neon green. Before that I preferred to be in the blue teem, because red sticks out more and since it's an alert color it's so much easier to shoot without thinking.
I don't see the Spanish National Team as a team with an advantage :P
I have nothing against them, and their nickname is The Fury, but any Spaniard will agree with me, I'm sure.
On the other hand, Brazil is a winning team... Maybe yellow is the correct color there?
As of blue... I'm from Argentina (light-blue and white)... are we doomed? :P
Of course the Blue Team loses, as evidence I submit the history of the Detroit Lions.
As more evidence of the Blue Team sucking I submit the Toronto Make Me Laughs, errr Make Believes, errr Maple Leafs. The've been sucking since 1967!
Finally a rational explanation for the 2004 presidential elections!
This didn't hold true for the team with red light sabers.
So that's why the Birtish Redcoats beat the blue-uniformed Americans in the ... oh wait.
I agree. DoD Rules!!!
I wonder this will work against the Bane in Tabula Rasa...red armor paint, here I come!
I think it has more to do with the fact that the general color palette is reddish orange, and one team wears reddish orange, while the other wears blueish black. This is a pretty good study on how well camouflage actually works. They do make it a little easier to see the snipahs than in real life (TF2 snipahs wear a black vest and black pants) vs. real life snipers who are usually wearing a blanket covered in shrubbery. But overall it looks like camouflage grants you a 5% increase in Win.
moox. for a new generation.
I also disagree, and cite as evidence the sport of paintball. Paintball is both a sport and a first person shooter, so it *ought* to fall right into the researchers target zone, but it doesn't. This is because any minor psychological advantage you might get is completely overwhelmed by how obvious a target you are. People quickly notice and blast you, even if only the smallest part of you is showing. That can also hold true in speedball as well as woodsball, and even in realistic computer FPS's (because red sticks out in a green forest online as much as in real life).
So really, the researchers got this all wrong, and the only time when you may get an advantage is sports where you AREN'T directly attacking each other (and instead are putting a ball in the hoop, for example). Had they read their history books, specifically parts about the British redcoats fighting Indians in the woods (and getting wasted, despite having all the guns), they might have saved themselves a lot of research grant money.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
In Battlefield 2, the red team always wins, no matter how much I C4 the blue team to get them motivated. [for those that never played BF2, enemy is _always_ red, teammates are usually blue; your squad is green]
Maize and Blue (UMichigan) v. Red and Grey (Ohio State)
At least in recent history anyways.
Does the study account for the possibility that skilled players tend to choose the red team?
...it's all about the red pills baby!
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
Spain's in red, so let's see if this holds.
Tied 1-1 at the moment.
Nonsense and poppycock. Here's why. Assume you have a Red and Blue team. Now assume that the players are all males. Because the players are male you have one huge elephant in the room which cancels out your "color-win" theories. - A large percentage of males are color deficient or color blind. Now let's make this even more confusing for the color clinds: introduce two more teams; a green and a light brown. Now you have thoroughly confused the color blind males. Let's make it even more possible to disprove your color hypotheses by controlling the teams so that all the players on all teams have at least some variation of color blindness. In order for something to reach "theory" status in science it must be controlled and as many variables as possible thrown at it in an attempt to DISPROVE it. When that happens, and third parties do the same or even other tests (peer review) it is elevated to the status of theory, which is the closest thing to "fact" that science will say. Simply because some studies show that "red" has an advantage does NOT mean that all possibilities were actually thrown at it to disprove it. You can find all sorts of studies on a myriad of topics with a conclusion but that doesn't mean their conclusion is true or even sound. For example, if the media and Victoria's Secret is believed then it would seem that that late 20th century men (and apparently women want to be like) preferred tall women with blond hair, blue eyes and a medium to large breast build, yet every weekend there are marriages to woman with dark hair, dark eyes and flat chests who their mate thinks is the most gorgeous woman on the planet.
Approximately 7% of males are red-green colorblind, and so have a slightly impaired ability to distiguish a red figure from a green or brown terrain. This might have something to do with it.
I have a harder time seeing red against earthy tones. Blue stands out like a sore thumb. I'm color blind, so that's why I have trouble quickly seeing a red player. That is something to keep in mind.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Did the players get to choose the color? If so, then it could be a selection effect (better players choosing red as expressive of their confidence; angrier players being both better and more likely to choose red; who knows).
Spain wins after scoring with 1 minute of stoppage time remaining. Seems to go towards the theory.
I seem to remember a certain revolutionary war where blue seemed to fair a bit better than red.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
FIRE FORD
Like most games, Unreal Tournament uses more warm lighting than cool, making cooler colors like blue stand out better against the environment. If it's easier to see, it's easier to hit, and in Deathmatch, hitting is all there is to the game. Also, half the guns in Unreal Tournament 2004 shoot projectiles that explode, with most of the explosions being some shade of red. More red things dynamically moving around the environment makes it harder to track Red players.
Perhaps the researchers should apply basic logic and play the game before leaping to conclusions.
Blue team has the flag
Where did that grenade come from?
Red team, flag returned.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
In auto balanced games, the give order goes red blue red blue red, correct? That is, red is significantly more likely to have an extra player than blue.
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
I suppose that the Red Shirt wins the chance to die early, rather than have to work opposite William Shattner's "acting".
--
make install -not war
Hmmm... the "red uniform" advantage must be why the British won during the American Revolution.
Let's all join in a rousing chorus of "God Save the Queen"...
Then explain the Hulk.
It's a very dark ride.
... as is currently evidenced by the Dutch soccer team on the current European Championship. Both Italy and France were defeated with large numbers (3-0, and 4-1), and both teams wore blue!
Hup Holland Hup!
Looks like the media should rethink its use of blue and red in elections.
They chose red for Republican and blue for Democrat because of the psychological meanings inherent in each color, specifically that red=danger or even "stop." Blue on the other hand, where it is used as a symbol or signal, is always neutral or or even positive.
Of course the MSM didn't realize that painting republicans/conservatives/libertarians as red gave them an advantage.
Looks like they need to rethink this approach if they want to continue working as the propaganda arm of the Democratic/communist/leftist political machine.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
May I submit as evidence the Champions League Final? Manchester United (Red) vs. Chelsea (Blue)
In (the news coverage of) American politics in recent years, states that tend to vote for Democrats (liberals or socialists in non-American politics) are called "blue states" and states that tend to vote for Republicans (conservatives) are called "red states." The decision to denote such states by color is perhaps useful if a little arbitrary. However, the actual colors chosen are a little odd because the color traditionally associated with socialism and its stronger flavors is red. I know this will strike many as flamebait*, but it is the press which has made these colors stick, and the press in America is quite strongly liberal (the upstart Fox News notwithstanding); one might guess that the decision to color the opposition red was made to invoke anger when news stories about politics are reported.
* Discuss at will, but, for example, after one recent presidential election, a survey was taken of a very large number of journalists and it was found that 88% of them voted for the Democrat (socialist) candidate.
Blue CTs have an advantage in dark levels
was tha Atlanta Falcons who painted the away teams dressing room pink because they read somewhere that it would placate their opponents.
Unfortunately their opponennts had not read the same article and continued on beating the Falcons.
Also the Falcons have reverted to red shirts.
How are they doing?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet that the Red Wings just won the Stanley Cup. On the other hand, in ice hockey, players intentionally try to make their opponents angry. :)
What is this "Detroit Lions"
A friend of mine who is a mathematical modeler stated that he has statistical proof that the decline of piracy can be directly linked to the increase in global warming.
When the away team teleports down to the planet surface it will be the Red Shirts who won't be coming back.
Transmitting energy without a license.
This is particularly interesting in the open-source cross-platform FPS "Sauerbraten/Cube2": The enemy is always depicted in red, and your team always depicted in blue (relative to you).
I'm colorblind... I always join the RED team because I can't see red... but blue is easy to see, bright and glowing. Red is too hard to see -- it's almost like wearing cammo.
It is like 1 out of 15 males are colorblind.
It only applies if they were their sox over their pants.
More general research years ago has already shown that wearing red gives one an advantage. The researchers here just proved that that also holds for this more specific arena. Not really news worthy in my humble opinion :-)
For an article about previous research:
http://www.livescience.com/health/050518_red_wins.html
Red color makes you salivate more... induces thirst AFAIK, Somebody in marketing psychology told me.
bought into the myth thta a pink dressing room for the away team would hinder their opponents.
Did not work.
Red team is the only team that plays.
Have gnu, will travel.
The University of Alabama Crimson Tide, wearing a shade of red, has lost six years straight to their in state rivals, the Auburn University Tigers, wearing blue.
Hayden Fry (former U. of Iowa football coach) was a Psych major, and tried this kind of color-psychological warfare on opposing teams by painting the visiting locker rooms pink. Iowa was a good program under Fry, but they didn't beat big opponents any more than experts thought they would, so I guess the pink thing was a failure too.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Explain college basketball, then. Top winning teams (championships and collective wins):
UCLA - BLUE and yellow
Kentucky - BLUE and white
UNC - BLUE and white
Duke - BLUE and white
Huh? Seems to me that the great gold and blue WVU Mountaineers bet the red vested Oklahoma team at the Fiesta Bowl in January.....by A LOT! Maybe the entire Mountaineer football team is color blind? Naw, they just wanted to kick some serious ass.
The blue team has won the last 6 years.
It's not always true...in paintball the team with less paint on them wins, regardless of the team they are on....LOL
Don't fear the penguins
That isn't what Carl Brutananadilewski says.
Dallas is blue.
Internally, the computer would just have teams A and B, but the computer could display for you your team wearing whatever colors/name you chose and show the other team wearing some other color.
You could have a game where everyone was on the RED team. And the OTHER guys were always 'shown' as a different color.
Wow... kind of reminds me of my first special relativity class. "No, YOUR clocks are slower". "No yours are..." ;)
> The Red Team Wins
Obvious bullshit. The evil red communist soviet side lost the Cold War.
The god-fearing blue side of free enterprise won the Cold War and buried the commies.
However, if we fail to stay alert, the green flag of islam could bury us eventually.
The color of your car is not coded into your VIN.
It simply isn't.
You can get the make, model, trim, engine size, but not the color. That's ridiculous.
-bZj
.sig
Angry? Or how about the fact that the color red is more irritating to the eyes (try looking at a red screen all day, vs a blue one)? This was based on JUST Unreal Tournament? Where reflexes are the only thing you need? How about a game that involves a little more stealth? Where maps have the background of the teams color (and not just some brown/semi-close red color). Personally I prefer the blue team because it's easier to get lost in a blue background than a red one (assuming the map is correctly colored).
I think the map is the biggest problem in the end, among a few other minor things.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Could it be that the team that wins tends to wear "red" more? i.e. tending to wear red may be an indicator of tending to be a winner at some (observed) games?