Does Uniform Color Actually Determine Who Will Win The Super Bowl?
It might seem odd to allow something like jersey color to influence your wager. But the results speak for themselves. They prove that jersey color is an important factor because the data sample in this trend is as large as can be. It accounts for every Super Bowl ever played. Plus, it is logically consistent with other trends. Overall, teams wearing white are 33-19 in the Super Bowl. In 12 of the last 14 Super Bowls, the winner has worn white. On the flip side, the team wearing dark jerseys is on a 1-11 Super Bowl run. The Patriots have historically performed at their best when wearing white. In their Super Bowl appearances, they are 2-2 when wearing blue, 0-1 when wearing red, and 3-2 when wearing white.
If you still feel uncomfortable relying on something as seemingly trivial as a team’s jersey color, you’re not alone. Media experts often dismiss the preference to wear white as superstition. Even if there were no actual causal connection between jersey color and performance, that doesn’t nullify its effectivity. The key is that teams believe in its significance. The same phenomenon appears in medicine where patients feel better when they take a placebo pill. They think that the pill will improve their health and, because they believe it, the pill does improve their health. Of course, placebo pills don’t cure cancer. Similarly, superstitions don’t allow teams who are vastly inferior in terms of quality to beat a much stronger team. However, that addition of positive belief can generate a significant enough mental advantage to make a difference in the end result.
The thing is that there is ongoing scientific research that supports the legitimacy of the jersey color phenomenon. The crux of this research explores the effect of clothing on our cognition and the result is called embodied cognition. The way that we mentally process the external world derives partly from our physical experiences. Our physical experience involves the clothes that we wear because they touch our skin and otherwise become a part of our body. One study that supports this line of thinking involved the following. It asked some people to wear normal street clothes and others to wear lab coats. The participants then had to detect incongruities in visual images. The people that wore lab coats made fewer errors. In other words, those who were dressed like doctors—like intelligent, mentally advanced people, cognized better. Such studies show that what you wear influences how you perform because of the social meaning that the respective clothes hold.
These scientific studies are relevant to football because football is all about execution. Just like if you have quick feet or reliable hands, if you wear the right clothing, then you will be mentally prepared to perform better. The Super Bowl isn’t the only area where clothes are relevant. In college football, the Iowa Hawkeyes have their visiting locker rooms painted pink. In our society as a whole, we associate pink with feminine virtues—with softness, gentleness, and the like. These virtues are wholly incompatible with the ones required to execute a game-plan in football—with aggression, physicality, anger, etc. Iowa has built up a reputation for being a tough place to play, especially for ranked opponents. This reputation derives partly from the color psychology that Iowa is aware of and that Iowa utilizes to weaken its opponents mentally.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Patriots will wear their white jerseys in Super Bowl LIII against the Rams, according to a club official. The team’s Super Bowl jersey history: <a href="https://t.co/GM4Kge3F18">pic.twitter.com/GM4Kge3F18</a></p>— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) <a href=" ">22. Januar 2019</a></blockquote>
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So why does white help teams to perform better? White carries a positive symbolic meaning. Most commonly, white is associated with purity, perfection, goodness, and completion. Think, for instance, of weddings. The bride is supposed to be untainted or pure and to gain completion in marriage, so she wears white. Recall also the experiment with the lab-coat. The participants cognized better with the color white. Teams that wear white perform better because they cognize more perfectly and with fewer errors, generate more positive vibes (for instance, from referees, who tend to be biased against darker uniforms because of their symbolic relationship with evil) for themselves, and execute a more complete game plan.
Of course, there are exceptions. Not every team in white wins. But the long history of this trend shows that wearing white does provide an advantage, one that is worth accounting for.
It might seem odd to allow something like jersey color to influence your wager. But the results speak for themselves. They prove that jersey color is an important factor because the data sample in this trend is as large as can be. It accounts for every Super Bowl ever played. Plus, it is logically consistent with other trends. Overall, teams wearing white are 33-19 in the Super Bowl. In 12 of the last 14 Super Bowls, the winner has worn white. On the flip side, the team wearing dark jerseys is on a 1-11 Super Bowl run. The Patriots have historically performed at their best when wearing white. In their Super Bowl appearances, they are 2-2 when wearing blue, 0-1 when wearing red, and 3-2 when wearing white.
If you still feel uncomfortable relying on something as seemingly trivial as a team’s jersey color, you’re not alone. Media experts often dismiss the preference to wear white as superstition. Even if there were no actual causal connection between jersey color and performance, that doesn’t nullify its effectivity. The key is that teams believe in its significance. The same phenomenon appears in medicine where patients feel better when they take a placebo pill. They think that the pill will improve their health and, because they believe it, the pill does improve their health. Of course, placebo pills don’t cure cancer. Similarly, superstitions don’t allow teams who are vastly inferior in terms of quality to beat a much stronger team. However, that addition of positive belief can generate a significant enough mental advantage to make a difference in the end result.
The thing is that there is ongoing scientific research that supports the legitimacy of the jersey color phenomenon. The crux of this research explores the effect of clothing on our cognition and the result is called embodied cognition. The way that we mentally process the external world derives partly from our physical experiences. Our physical experience involves the clothes that we wear because they touch our skin and otherwise become a part of our body. One study that supports this line of thinking involved the following. It asked some people to wear normal street clothes and others to wear lab coats. The participants then had to detect incongruities in visual images. The people that wore lab coats made fewer errors. In other words, those who were dressed like doctors—like intelligent, mentally advanced people, cognized better. Such studies show that what you wear influences how you perform because of the social meaning that the respective clothes hold.
These scientific studies are relevant to football because football is all about execution. Just like if you have quick feet or reliable hands, if you wear the right clothing, then you will be mentally prepared to perform better. The Super Bowl isn’t the only area where clothes are relevant. In college football, the Iowa Hawkeyes have their visiting locker rooms painted pink. In our society as a whole, we associate pink with feminine virtues—with softness, gentleness, and the like. These virtues are wholly incompatible with the ones required to execute a game-plan in football—with aggression, physicality, anger, etc. Iowa has built up a reputation for being a tough place to play, especially for ranked opponents. This reputation derives partly from the color psychology that Iowa is aware of and that Iowa utilizes to weaken its opponents mentally.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Patriots will wear their white jerseys in Super Bowl LIII against the Rams, according to a club official. The team’s Super Bowl jersey history: <a href="https://t.co/GM4Kge3F18">pic.twitter.com/GM4Kge3F18</a></p>— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) <a href=" ">22. Januar 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
So why does white help teams to perform better? White carries a positive symbolic meaning. Most commonly, white is associated with purity, perfection, goodness, and completion. Think, for instance, of weddings. The bride is supposed to be untainted or pure and to gain completion in marriage, so she wears white. Recall also the experiment with the lab-coat. The participants cognized better with the color white. Teams that wear white perform better because they cognize more perfectly and with fewer errors, generate more positive vibes (for instance, from referees, who tend to be biased against darker uniforms because of their symbolic relationship with evil) for themselves, and execute a more complete game plan.
Of course, there are exceptions. Not every team in white wins. But the long history of this trend shows that wearing white does provide an advantage, one that is worth accounting for.
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