In my blog about wearing different colours in sport, I talked about the advantage of wearing red in tae kwon do, where it appeared to give the perception to judges that the wearer was more aggressive. The suggestion that wearing red was advantageous in football was much less conclusive.
One colour I didn’t mention was black. Frank & Gilovic (1988) found that wearing black in American Football and ice hockey led to a perception of increased aggression, but in this case it was a disadvantage because it led to more penalties against those teams.
They analysed five NHL teams with 50% or more black in the uniforms, and five NHL teams. All of the dark-colour teams were near the top of the group in terms of penalties awarded against them for aggression. Two ice hockey teams that switched to black uniforms during the season saw an increase in penalties.
When two identical American Football games were shown with the uniform colours reversed in the different versions, those watching felt that the black-uniformed team was more likely to be penalised. Turning off the colour on the video eliminated the effect.
There may even be an effect from just wearing black. College students chose more aggressive sports from a list for further competition when they wore black.
It has to be said that the New Zealand All Blacks don’t seem to have suffered too much from this effect. On the other hand, might it be part of the reason why football referees get so much stick?
David Donner
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