Researchers Say You Should Join the Red Team
This month's issue of CyberPsychology & Behavior includes a paper from four researchers at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania arguing that players in competitive games have an advantage if they play on the "red" team against a "blue" team.
Building on previous research that suggested that teams in the 2004 Olympic Games were more successful when clad in red uniforms. Mihai Moldovan, Leon Zagrean, Silvia Ioan and Andrei Illie examined the results of 1,347 matches of Unreal Tournament 2004 team deathmatch games played by a specific group of players.
The researchers found that red teams won 54.9% of matches, suggesting that being on the red team provides a slight, but statistically significant, advantage in online play. The study suggests that red may "trigger a powerful psychological distractor signal in human aggressive competition..."
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