Could outfit color affect skating scores?

[Query]

There was a Science channel program which discussed studies that people have done on how uniform color affects sports performance.

For example, some studies seem to show that red uniforms enhance performance in several sports.

If true, why? Is it internal, or how good the referees or judges are at seeing errors, or seeing successful moves?

One study appeared to show that color affected soccer players’ hormonal balance, for red v.s. blue uniforms.

Another study showed that Tai Kwon Do athletes were judged by referees to have scored more points if they wore red than blue. Then red and blue were interchanged by image processing, and the referees reversed the bias.

(I don’t know if either study has been confirmed or expanded. Scientific skepticism is always in order.)

It would be interesting to know if anyone has studied whether color impacts judged skating scores.

If outfit color and appearance affects skating scores, and the details became known, would everyone’s skating outfit look the same? Would that in turn change the results?

To complicate matters, there is both ethnic and cultural variation in how color is perceived. For example, in most of the U.S., pink is feminine. Likewise, in most of the U.S., flowers are feminine, yet not in native Hawaiian culture, and flowers are given to all Olympic medalists. Someone told me that pink is commonly worn by boys in Israel. Again, some human females have four types of color sensors (cones) in the eye, instead of the usual three (though that's only a few percent of the population), and there is also variation in the human species regarding the color sensitivity of the usual three cones. If that variation is ethnically variant, that could possibly affect judging.

[sampaguita]

Even if the judges deny it, I think costume does affect scores. That's why skaters invest in them so heavily.

As far as color is concerned, I think some colors are more neutral, while some might generate a negative reaction. Might explain why blue is quite a popular color in ladies' figure skating, as compared to, say, orange.

[davincisop]

Some colors also show up better on the ice. I was talking with a coach friend while we were watching an exhibition warm up and we noticed that 8 out of the ten skaters had some variation of a red and she said that's because it shows up really well on the ice. There was one skater wearing white, and it blended in, and another wearing a pretty teal color which stood out as nicely as the red.

[AgnesNitt]

I remember a wonderful article by Irina Romanova on "Designing With Color" for figure skaters. It used to be on the webpages of the Skating Club of Wilmington, but it's gone now.  She had a lot of insight into it. I wish I'd copied it off.

[Sushi]

I remember a wonderful article by Irina Romanova on "Designing With Color" for figure skaters. It used to be on the webpages of the Skating Club of Wilmington, but it's gone now.  She had a lot of insight into it. I wish I'd copied it off.

You can still see it http://web.archive.org/web/20120504232550/http://www.wilmicesk8.com/Designing%20with%20color-page1.html.

If the link above doesn't work search http://www.wilmicesk8.com/Designing%20with%20color-page1.html
on http://archive.org/web/web.php for May's 4 2012 snapshot. The article is 6 pages long.

[AgnesNitt]

Thank you for going to the effort of locating it! I hope others find it useful.

[Query]

That's interesting. Very much in line with how some coaches have portraits that really stand out in the rink-published bios, because their face fills the frame, and they dress nice, and others don't.

But it wasn't what I was thinking of - I want to know if there have been any scientific studies about how outfit color affects skating results.

I found one very speculative statement:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009338

has "in gymnastics and in figure skating, the color of the outfit worn would affect the judges' speed of pursuit as they watch the routine which could affect the scoring. "

But, searching at Google Scholar, it seemed like most of the studies I found were by authors who were talking about how evil they thought figure skating was for young ladies because they feel it exaggerates conventional female role models. No doubt an interesting topic for some, but irrelevant to the question of how to optimize figure skating scores.