Assessing Whether Black Uniforms Affect the Decisions of Turkish Soccer Referees: Is Finding of Frank and Gilovich's Study Valid for Turkish Culture?

The Moral Gatekeeper: Soccer and Technology, the Case of Video Assistant Referee (VAR)

Video assistant referee was officially introduced into soccer regulations in 2018, after many years in which referee errors were justified as being “part of the game.” The technology’s penetration into the soccer field was accompanied by concerns and much criticism that, to a large degree, continues to be voiced with frequency. This paper argues that, despite fierce objections and extensive criticism, VAR represents an important revision in modern professional soccer, and moreover, it completes a moral revolution in the evolution of the sport as a whole. Theoretically speaking, this technology enables an improvement in the sport’s professional standards and its public image and prestige, and especially its moral standards – Fair play. Furthermore, the introduction of this technology makes it possible to discover additional weaknesses (Standardization for extra time, a clear definition of a handball offense and more) that professional soccer regulations will probably be forced to address in the future.

Exploring the Implicit Link Between Red and Aggressiveness as Well as Blue and Agreeableness

Previous studies have found a link between red and aggressive behavior. For example, athletes who wear red uniforms in sports are considered to have a competitive advantage. So far, most previous studies have adopted self-report methods, which have low face validity and were easily influenced by the social expectations. Therefore, the study used two implicit methods to further explore the association between red and aggressiveness. A modified Stroop task was used in Experiment 1 to probe college students' differences between "congruent" tasks (i.e., red-aggressiveness and blue-agreeableness) and "incongruent" tasks (i.e., red-agreeableness and blue-aggressiveness). Result showed that participants responded more quickly to the congruent tasks than the incongruent tasks. Then, in order to adapt to the competitive context, Experiment 2 used an implicit association test with photos of athletes as the stimulus to college students and athletes to evaluate "congruent" tasks (i.e., red uniform photo-aggressiveness and blue uniform photo-agreeableness) as well as "incongruent" tasks (i.e., red uniform photo-agreeableness and blue uniform photo-aggressiveness), respectively. According to the results, both college students and athletes respond faster to congruent tasks than to incongruent tasks. Besides, athletes' reactions to the red-aggressiveness association are faster than college students, which may relate to the athletes' professional experience. The athletes may be more aggressive and impulsive. Overall, the study has attempted to examine the association between red and aggressiveness through implicit methods, but in the future, researches are need to find a deep association from brain mechanism aspect.

Does Blue Uniform Color Enhance Winning Probability in Judo Contests?

The color of an athlete's uniform may have an effect on psychological functioning and consequently bias the chances of winning contests in sport competition. Several studies reported a winning bias for judo athletes wearing a blue outfit relative to those wearing a white outfit. However, we argue there is no winning bias and that previous studies were confounded and based on small and specific data sets. We tested whether blue biases winning in judo using a very extensive judo data set (45,874 contests from all international judo tournaments between 2008 and 2014). In judo, the first called athlete for the fight used to wear the blue judogi but this was changed to the white judogi in 2011. This switch enabled us to compare the win bias before and after this change to isolate the effect of the color of the judogi. We found a significant win bias for the first called athlete, but this effect was not significantly related to the color of the judogi. The lack of a significant win effect of judogi color suggests that blue does not bias winning in judo, and that the blue-white pairing ensures an equal level of play. Our study shows the importance of thoroughly considering alternative explanations and using extensive datasets in color research in sports and psychology.

Color psychology: effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans

Color is a ubiquitous perceptual stimulus that is often considered in terms of aesthetics. Here we review theoretical and empirical work that looks beyond color aesthetics to the link between color and psychological functioning in humans. We begin by setting a historical context for research in this area, particularly highlighting methodological issues that hampered earlier empirical work. We proceed to overview theoretical and methodological advances during the past decade and conduct a review of emerging empirical findings. Our empirical review focuses especially on color in achievement and affiliation/attraction contexts, but it also covers work on consumer behavior as well as food and beverage evaluation and consumption. The review clearly shows that color can carry important meaning and can have an important impact on people's affect, cognition, and behavior. The literature remains at a nascent stage of development, however, and we note that considerable work on boundary conditions, moderators, and real-world generalizability is needed before strong conceptual statements and recommendations for application are warranted. We provide suggestions for future research and conclude by emphasizing the broad promise of research in this area.

Racism in soccer? Perception of challenges of black and white players by white referees, soccer players, and fans

This experiment investigated challenge evaluations in soccer and their relation to prejudice: more precisely, whether skin colour may influence judgments of soccer tackles. Three groups of participants (soccer players, referees,and soccer fans) were asked to evaluate challenges, featuring Black and White players as aggressors and victims in a mixed-design study. Results showed that participants made some differentiations between Black and White players in a challenge evaluation task. Participants were more likely to consider within-group challenges as fouls and were faster to consider challenges made by Black players as fouls. On the other hand, fouls made by White players were seen as more severe. There were no major differences between the participating groups, suggesting that the observed effects were independent of how good players were or whether the participants were referees or not.

On Thin Ice

Past research suggests that wearing either a black or a red uniform leads to increased aggression or an increase in perceived aggression during professional sports. However, this research suffers from a number of limitations, including an inability to manipulate the independent variable. A recent change in the National Hockey League’s uniform policy created the possibility of a naturally occurring experiment that allowed the authors to examine whether aggression levels were higher when teams wore black or red jerseys. The authors compared games against the same opponent in which home teams wore red or black jerseys for one game and their usual color for another game on several measures of aggression. They found no evidence that either black or red uniforms were related to higher levels of aggression in professional hockey games.

Decision-making skills, role specificity, and deliberate practice in association football refereeing

In association football, two similar but arguably different refereeing roles are required, those of the referee and assistant referee. Role specificity was investigated with a foul play assessment task and an offside decision-making task. Deliberate practice was investigated to account for role-specific differences. First, role specificity was clearly observed. Second, years of officiating, hours of practice per week, and number of matches officiated were each positively correlated with skill. The results support role specificity in association football refereeing. Further research should help to create role-specific perception and decision-making training programmes both for referees and assistant referees.

Soccer penalty takers' uniform colour and pre-penalty kick gaze affect the impressions formed of them by opposing goalkeepers

In this study, we examined the impact of soccer players' uniform colour and gaze behaviour on the impressions that are formed of them by opposing goalkeepers. Twelve soccer goalkeepers observed video footage, filmed from between the goalposts to simulate their usual viewpoint, of four players preparing to take a penalty kick. Each of the four players displayed a different combination of gaze (either 90% or 10% with gaze operationalized as looking directly at the camera) and uniform colour (red or white). Goalkeepers rated each player on a series of descriptors (e.g. confidence, composure, assertiveness) and rated their expectancies for successfully saving penalty kicks from that player. Analysis revealed that those penalty takers displaying 90% gaze were perceived to possess positive characteristics to a greater extent than penalty takers displaying 10% gaze. Results also revealed penalty takers wearing red were perceived to possess positive characteristics to a greater extent than those wearing white. Goalkeepers reported higher expectancies of saving penalties from penalty takers displaying 10% gaze and wearing white uniforms than any of the other combinations. Our results therefore support the potential importance of gaze and uniform colour in the formation of impressions and expectancies in sport.

No effect of blue on winning contests in judo

A study by Rowe et al. reported a winning bias for judo athletes wearing a blue outfit relative to those wearing a white one during the 2004 Olympics. It was suggested that blue is associated with a higher likelihood of winning through differential effects of colour on opponent visibility and/or an intimidating effect on the opponent. However, we argue that there is no colour effect on winning in judo. We show that alternative factors, namely allocation biases, asymmetries in prior experience and differences in recovery time are possible confounding factors in the analysis of Rowe et al. After controlling for these factors, we found no difference in blue and white wins. We further analysed contest outcomes of 71 other major judo tournaments and also found no winning bias. Our findings have implications for sports policy makers: they suggest that a white-blue outfit pairing ensures an equal level of play.