Red is a distractor for men in competition

Abstract Red athletic uniforms may have a psychological effect on the behavior of the wearer and/or opponent in combat sport. The aim of this study was to investigate the distractor effect of red color during a computerized Stroop task. A group of medical students (27 men and 23 women) were asked to accurately name the red, blue or green color of a series of equiluminant color words that appeared on a dark computer screen. The participants were told that their performance would be ranked. Stroop interference (SI) was quantified as the prolongation in response times (RTs) when naming color–color word incongruent stimuli than when naming noncolor words. We found that men experienced more SI when naming the red color in relation to RTs when naming the other colors. Men also experienced shorter RT than women, but this effect was not specific to naming of the red color. When the luminosity of the colored stimuli was halved, the RT was prolonged to a similar extent in both men and women but the gender discrepancy in SI during red color naming was maintained. Furthermore, in men SI for red positively correlated with scores on the depression subscale of the SCL-90-R questionnaire. Our data suggest that "seeing red" distracts men through a psychological rather than perceptual mechanism. Such a mechanism would associate red with aggression or dominance and may have a long evolutionary history, as indicated by behavioral evidence from nonhuman primates and other species.