“All things being equal between two figure skaters – including their actual speed on the ice – the judges will perceive a skater in red is moving with greater speed than a skater in blue, and may reward the skater in red with higher marks,” said Mazyar Fallah, assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in York’s Faculty of Health.
The study, conducted by Fallah and co-author Illia Tchernikov in York’s Centre for Vision Research, was published today by the open access peer reviewed journal Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE).
Their research on visual processing found that people’s eyes more quickly follow a red target on a computer screen than a green, yellow, or especially a blue target.
“In sports, the outcome of a competition is supposed to depend on the abilities of the players, rather than the colours they are wearing,” said Fallah. “However, our research shows it may make sense to wear red in a sport such as figure skating, in which you want to be perceived as quick. In contrast, it may be best to wear another colour in a sport in which a referee is handing out penalties.”
The finding that there is a colour hierarchy that automatically guides selection of what someone will focus on has implications for many sports such as figure skating and gymnastics in which speed may be perceived by a judge rather than measured in milliseconds, Fallah said. It may also be important for other fields such as advertising, in which capturing attention is paramount, and in designing human-computer interfaces that are effective, he said.
Five subjects took part in the study, with each completing about 1,000 tests. Each participant automatically focused on targets on the screen and all produced the same colour hierarchy, choosing red targets first, followed by green, yellow and blue. This suggests, said Fallah, that the colour hierarchy is inherent, either because of evolution – red is the colour of blood, whereas blue is the colour of the sky – or as a result of experience − red stop signs and traffic signals indicate danger.
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Media contact:
Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22101 / wallsj@yorku.ca
