Uniform colour affects free kicks and penalties?

[Chief]

Reading the book "How We Know What Isn't So".

In it, the author tells of a study he did in which professional NFL umpires rated the exact same plays as more aggressive and dangerous when performed by teams in black uniforms and the teams with black uniforms being at the top of their leagues for penalties against.

The 1988 study was called The Dark Side of Self and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports:

http://people.uncw.edu/tothj/PSY355/Frank-Black Uniforms-JPSP-1988.pdf

Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty records of the National Football League and the National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties. The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes—that is, to the biased judgments of referees and to the increased aggressiveness of the players themselves. Our discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of these data for an understanding of the variable, or "situated," nature of the self.

I'd love to see if this holds true for the AFL, then Collingwood and Essendon supporters could have stats to back up their incessant whining.

Do black or mostly-black uniforms earn a team more frees against?

Does the Brisbane Lions lighter-coloured away guernsey give them an advantage in the free kick stats against, say, Essendon?

Should teams looking for a reduction in free against avoid black on their uniform? If the team is not as aggressive as it should be, would a black uniform help?

 

[Chief]

Quick stats. Average Frees For (FF) and Frees Against (FA) for years 1998 to 2008:

	        FF	FA
Adelaide	389.3	396.9
Brisbane Lions	387.5	405.8
Carlton	        405.9	397.0
Collingwood	398.2	375.5
Essendon	390.9	420.4
Fremantle	392.3	389.6
Geelong	        423.3	411.2
Hawthorn	396.5	417.2
Melbourne	387.2	414.2
North Melbourne	394.9	374.3
Port Adelaide	415.4	420.8
Richmond	390.1	367.1
St Kilda	399.6	398.2
Sydney	        403.5	431.0
West Coast	416.5	380.6
Western Bulldogs406.6	380.6

This doesn't tell us a heap - you'd have to look at games with teams with majority black uniform against teams with majority white uniform.

Maybe throw in teams like Carlton with a "dark" uniform and Brisbane in their yellow/white away guernseys.

 

[beatlesmith]

Sydney have the brightest uniform in the comp, yet have the highest frees against. That would factor in playing style, which opens up a large can of worms.

I thought i would have a look at 2008 as a sample, using Sydney, NM and Brisbane as my 'light' test subjects, and essendon, carlton and melbourne as the test subjects for 'dark', as close to black as possible. Results are for games between clubs of each test subject group;

Based on the criteria, there were 12 matches in 2008 in which this test can be based on.
Ess vs NM
Melb vs NM
Melb vs Bris
Cal vs Bris
Ess vs Syd
Melb vs Syd
Melb vs Bris
Ess vs Bris
Carl vs Syd
Melb vs NM
Carl vs NM
Carl vs Bris

Ended up being 237 FF Darks vs 251 FF lights, or averages of 19.75 vs 20.91 a game.

Not a very significant difference, but a difference nonetheless. Must note that i didn't include richmond and instead chose melbourne in order to have differentiating colour patterns.

Interesting to note that the 'light' teams conceeded 1373 FA's in the season, whereas the dark teams conceded 1318. This evidence supports the notion of dark uniforms encouraging FA's, as it shows that dark vs light games buck the usual trend.

So many variables though. Only 4 of the 12 games had the losing team getting more frees for, showing that the victorious team conceded less frees for the most part, and going by the fact that the 3 light teams performed better overall for the season, it isn't exactly a fair test. Don't bother poking holes in it, it is a very leaky ship, and this is really only a proof of concept preliminary test.

Would like to expand the search, but in the desire not to have hard work shot down, i would need to get 6 subject clubs for both dark and light from those in this thread.
Maybe Ess, Carl, Rich, Melb, Port, Coll vs Syd, NM, Bris, WC, StK, Adel?

 

[Chief]

Maybe do a couple of analyses - dark vs light and black vs light.

So you're looking at Collingwood, Essendon, Richmond as your blacks. Then test against:

- Dark (Carlton, Melbourne... ?)

- Light colours (NMFC etc?).

- 50% or more White colours (e.g. Sydney, Brisbane away, Geelong in white shorts etc)

- And finally all of the above three in a "non-black" category.

Do any of the black guernsey teams play in non-black away strips? Does this switch to non-black consistently help them in the frees?

You'd want to go back ten years or so to even out the playing styles - Geelong had 600 frees for in 2008! This might be a great deal of work in going back and finding every guernsey worn in the last ten years.

So for every game put the two teams in either the black bucket or one out of the dark, white and non-black buckets.

The point of differentiating white, dark and non-black would give us an idea if it is specifically white that has an effect or if it just has to be non-black.


In the end you may just want to simplify it: 50% or more black on the uniform vs 50% or more white on the uniform, going back as many years as you have time to do.

 

[Belnakor]

There was something going awhile back about how the color Yellow was proven to be more successful for sporting teams, probably related to this.

 

[SJ]

There was something going awhile back about how the color Yellow was proven to be more successful for sporting teams, probably related to this.

Red it was.

 

[goDees22]

There was something going awhile back about how the color Yellow was proven to be more successful for sporting teams, probably related to this.

i heard that too. makes richmond seem even worse