Influence Of Wearing Red Colored Shirt On The Athletes’ Performance

Dreiskaemper, Strauss, Hagemann, and Büsch (2013) set up an experiment where they tested their hypothesis that a red colored sport shirt may influence the athletes wearing them. Even though studies have been done on the psychological effects of the color on spectators and wearers, these researchers primarily focused on the physiological effects of the wearers by measuring the athlete’s heart rate and strength during the experiment. The experiment consisted of a random sample of 28 male handball players that were chosen from four different German lower league handball teams. This was a single-blind experiment because the participants were deceived on its true purpose but afterwards were debriefed for ethical purposes.

The 28 male handball players were split up and then partnered up with another player of similar age, height, and weight to reduce extraneous variables. Then, in an experimenter controlled setting, the 14 pairs were trained to fight each other with safely cushioned sticks. They were to hit their opponent above the waistline for points. The independent variable of the experiment was the color jersey the opponents wore (which was randomly assigned to each pair). The pairs were told to fight twice to give the other the opportunity to wear the red jersey (the participants were oblivious to this reason). The dependent variables were the heart rates and the strength of each player. Both of which were tested before the fight, during the fight and after the fight with pulse watches and leg dynamometers. Their fights were videotaped and then formatted to black and white. The reason behind this was so that the independent raters judging the fights would not be influenced by the color jerseys. The players were given a questionnaire during their break, after the first fight, to get more background information on their sport history and so that they would give an estimation on their own personal exertion capabilities (which was measured on a RPE scale). After further training, they repeated their fight with exchanged equipment and jerseys.

The hypothesis made by Dreiskaemper et al. (2013) was supported with evidence from their experiment. Both averages of heart rates and strength tests showed that players in red jerseys had a higher average for both compared to the players in blue jerseys. For the average heart rates, the only difference was found during the fight with the red jerseys having significantly higher means. There was no difference in average heart rates observed before or after the fights for either red or blue colored. For the strength tests, those in the red sports shirts had higher values before the fight than blue jersey players and the control. The researchers noted that they could not control other light factors such as hue or lightness of the colors and they also mentioned that the color blue may be viewed as relaxing by the players, so there is a possibility those factors affected the results. There is also speculation on whether higher heart rates translate to better fighting skills. An argument can be made that it doesn’t affect a player’s skills. The color red of the jerseys affected the players physiologically, like the researchers hypothesized, but it does not necessarily make red jersey wearers better players.

Critique

The researchers of this study did a good job on designing the experiment and controlling possible extraneous variables. They took the necessary steps to ensure they got rid of cofounding variables by random sampling and random assignment. Regarding validity, which is whether the experiment measures what it’s supposed to, this experiment did a good job of that. There were significant differences from the red sports jersey players in heart rate and strength than those in blue sport jerseys. Since the researchers took the time to make sure the experiment relied only on the differences in jerseys, (which was done by pairing similar players, making it single-blind and randomly assigning), the experiment can be considered to be valid. The experiment is reliable, which means that it is consistent in its findings, because the results can be replicated over and over and they will not change. When the pairs switched gear and jerseys it eliminated the possibility that the elevated heart rate and strength test was due solely on the player’s skill. Switching the jerseys between players and still having the results measure that red jerseys have a higher mean across the board show how reliable the results were.

Taking in consideration of the findings of the authors, I believe they correctly interpreted their findings and were even honest about possible third variables that would need to be tested for in the future. Their findings of average higher heart rates and strength tests in red jerseys provide me with enough credibility to believe that the color may have some kind of effect on these athletes. The sex of the participants may also influence how the color red is perceived. For future studies, I would recommend obtaining a more representative group of participants by randomly selecting people of all sexes and ages that play sports. I would still recommend they get paired up with similar partners though. Besides the possible effect that the color blue and the participants used in this study, I cannot infer other possible third variables unaccounted for. Even though the authors stated that the hues and lightness of the colors may also affect the outcome, (and even if it did) I don’t believe it would skew the outcomes by a significant amount.

Dreiskaemper et al. (2013) used an ANOVA to further show that the random order of the colors does not impact the study. The researcher used a T-test to compare the average means of all the outcomes to correctly interpret the results. The authors appropriately followed ethical guidelines for this experiment, in my opinion. They deceived the participants on the true purpose of the study, but they debriefed them after the experiment. The chosen handball participants agreed to take part in the experiment and were not forced or coerced in any way.

If I were to perform a follow-up study of this experiment, I would use a larger sample because 28 male handball players are not representative of the whole sports community. I would still pair up people similar in age, height and weight to limit those extraneous variables but I would consider other ages and females to participate. I would also test other colors against the color red to see if there is statistically significant evidence that supports the claim that the color red changes players physiologically. Since blue could be seen as relaxing, I would just use multiple colors to test my hypothesis that red can affect players.

Brief Summary

In a single-blind experiment conducted by Dreiskaemper et al. (2013), they hypothesized that the color red on jerseys influenced players physiologically. The researchers used heart rate and strength tests to measure the influence of the red jerseys on a sample of 28 randomly selected male handball players, who were split into pairs of twos and randomly assigned to a jersey and trained to fight with cushioned sticks. After the first fight the pair were told to switch jerseys and gear, and fight one more time. Afterwards, the results were interpreted and it was found that on average, the heart rates and strength of players in red jerseys were higher than those in blue jerseys. These results supported the hypothesis of the researchers who then stated that the color red does not explicitly make these players better, just that these differences were observed.