Autonomic Nervous System Mediated Effects Of Sportswear Color On The Contest Outcome

Purpose: Hill et al and Rowe et al recently suggested that the sportswear color might influence the outcome of contests, and they attributed their results to psychological and perceptual effects, respectively. The effects of sportswear color on contest outcome (ESCO) of World Cup 2006 were studied from the homeostatic viewpoint of autonomic nervous system (ANS) in this paper.Methods:1. The difference between the teams of a match was assessed by the team distance, the Euclidian distance in multi-dimensional space consisting of the technique parameters of the two team in the match and team world ranking of Federation International Football Association (FIFA). The assessing schemes were different from one another in numbers of the technique parameters. Among them, the best scheme was chosen on the base of the validity test. There were 64 matches in World Cup 2006. The 7 matches containing Germany were excluded according to home court advantage. The other 57 matches were ranked in terms of the team distance and classified into four grades so that the degree of team asymmetry of a match in grade 1, 2, 3 and 4 were none, small, medium and large, respectively.2. Sportswear color was classified into cold color such as green, blue and violet, hot color such as red, orange and yellow, cold color plus hot color, and white. The contest outcome of all the 57 matches was analyzed from the viewpoint of sportswear color. The data were assessed with Chi-square Test.3. ESCO mechanism was studied in terms of color-ANS model (CAM) and ANS role in soccer matches. According to CAM, the color vision might be weakly coupled with ANS in hypothalamus so that cold color might excite parasympathetic subsystem while hot color might excite sympathetic subsystem if the ANS is far from its homeostasis.Results:1 The assessing scheme consisting of FIFA world ranking, goal, shot, shot on goal, ball possession, accuracy in passing ball, and percentage of shot was the best one to judge team distance of a football match.2. For cold-hot matches, the two competitors wore in cold color and hot color, respectively. It was found the possibility that wearing cold color didn't win was higher than the one that wearing cold color won for all the cold-hot matches. The possibility that wearing cold color didn't win increased when the degree of team asymmetry decreased. However, there was no significant difference between the possibilities that wearing hot color won and didn't win, respectively.3. For white-color matches, the two competitors wore in white and color, respectively. It was found that the possibility that wearing white didn't win was higher than the one that wearing white wined for all the white-color matches.4. ESCO supported CAM.Conclusions:1.For cold-hot matches, wearing cold color had no predominance.2.For white-color matches, wearing white had no predominance.3. ESCO might be related to the ANS homeostasis.