AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORVolume 38, pages 166–169 (2012)

When Drivers See Red: Car Color Frustrators and Drivers’AggressivenessNicolas Gueguen1∗, Celine Jacob1, Marcel Lourel2, and Alexandre Pascual3

1Universite de Bretagne-Sud, Vannes, France2Universite d’Artois, Famars, France3Universite de Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France

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Research has found that exposition to red is associated with physiological activation and fighting spirit. A field experiment wasconducted to explore whether the color of cars is related to an aggressive response. Drivers waiting at a traffic light were blocked byan experimental car. The color of the car varied (blue, red, green, black, and white). The amount of time that elapsed until the driversresponded by honking their horns or beaming their headlights was the dependent variable. It was found that the red car elicited earlyaggressive response. Aggr. Behav. 38:166–169, 2012. C© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Keywords: car color; frustration; aggressiveness

INTRODUCTION

Early research has found that color has physiologi-cal, psychological, and behavioral effects on humans.In the literature, some studies support the premisethat certain colors have the capacity to excite and toarouse individuals while others are capable of calmingand relaxing people. It was observed in Goldstein’searly study [1942] that when patients with organicdiseases of the central nervous system were in thepresence of green, they displayed less abnormal be-haviors while they displayed more deviant behaviorin the presence of red. According to this author, redcould have the property to induce a state of excitationwhereas green could promote relaxation. These as-sumptions were confirmed in later studies using phys-iological measures of excitation and arousal. Gerard[1958] found that male participants looking at a screenon which a blue light was projected displayed lowerpalmar conductance, blood pressure, respiration rate,and eye blinking whereas an increase on such mea-sures was observed with a red light. Wilson [1966]used a skin conductance measure and found a higherlevel of conductance in a highly saturated red slides ex-posure condition than in a green condition, providingsupport for the hypothesis that red is more arousing,exciting, and stimulating than green. When compar-ing red, yellow, green, and blue displayed on a screen,Jacobs and Hustmyer [1974] found that the galvanic

skin response (GSR) was higher in a red condition.Using a study in a more realistic setting (a gamblingcontext), Stark et al. [1982] found that participantsexposed to red waged more money and increased thenumber of bets than those in blue ambient lighting.

Red coloration has been associated with domi-nance and aggression in a number of animals. Insome nonhuman primates such as mandrills or rhesusmacaques, red on the face or chest of an opponent isa signal of the dominance or attack readiness of thatconspecific [Setchell and Wickings, 2005]. It has beenfound that red is associated with greater fighting spiritin human primates. Hill and Barton [2005] analyzedthe results of men’s combat sports of the 2004 AthensOlympics and found that more matches were wonby fighters wearing red outfits than by those wearingblue. According to the authors, red might confer suc-cess because it is a sign of dominance in many animalspecies and could signal aggression in human con-tests. Other scientists argued that red enhances fight-ing spirit and aggressiveness that would explain why

∗Correspondence to: Nicolas Gueguen, Universite de Bretagne-Sud,DSEG, rue de la loi, 56000 Vannes, France. E-mail: nicolas.gueguen@univ-ubs.fr

Received 2 August 2011; Accepted 30 November 2011

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).DOI: 10.1002/ab.21416

C© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Color and Aggressiveness 167

men wearing red won their fight more favorably. In arecent study, Elliot and Aarts [2011] found that redenhanced the force of motor output and the rapiditywith which that force was expressed.

These previous studies linked red color to a higherlevel of physiological arousal, force and velocity ofmotor output, and fighting spirit. However, most ofthese studies were conducted in a laboratory settingand did not really test aggressive behavior with hu-mans. Moreover, possible confounded variables couldexplain some effects found in the literature. Hage-mann et al. [2008] found that referees gave more pointsto competitors dressed in red, even when their perfor-mance was identical to that of competitors in blue.Thus, this “referee effect” could explain the results ofHill and Barton [2005].

In this experiment, we used the experimentalparadigm developed by Doob and Gross [1968] toevaluate drivers’ aggressive behavior according to thecolor of the car that preceded and blocked them.

METHOD

Participants

Four hundred and twenty-two drivers (244 men and178 women) waited in their cars at a red light. Theexperiment was conducted at the beginning of the2010 summer vacations on sunny days.

Materials

Unlike Doob and Gross [1968] who tested the ef-fect of the status of a frustrator based on the modelof his car that was blocking drivers after the trafficlight turned green, we did not vary the type of carthat was used by the frustrator. The model of the carused by the frustrator was the same in the five exper-imental conditions: a Renault Clio rated middle classby the French Automobile Association. The modelwas strictly the same with the same external appear-ance and engine type. Only the color of the coach-work differed. Five colors were used: red, green, blue,black, and white. The color used was the basic colorproposed by Renault for this model. Renault pro-posed additional color ranges (e.g. yellow) but witha metallic or pearl finish. None of these colors werestudied here. The HSL (hue, saturation, and lightness)codes of the color of the coachwork were: black (HSLcode = 187, 145, 42), white (HSL = 182, 86, 231), red(HSL = 6, 173, 138), blue (HSL = 170, 165, 136), andgreen (HSL = 71, 179, 140). Pre-experimental mea-sures performed with 15 male undergraduates and 15female undergraduates who have their driving licenserevealed that the five colors were clearly perceived asblack, white, red, green, and blue as expected.

Procedure

A 20-year-old male confederate was alone in thecar used to block drivers. He was instructed not to ac-celerate after the traffic light turned green. Two maleobservers were seated on a public bench 50 m fromthe experimental car. The two observers were blindto the objectives of the experiment and they weretrained separately during a pretest period in orderto see if they reported accurate values and obser-vations according to the car color. Accurate valueswere reported by both observers. The first observerwas instructed to time the latency period betweenthe blocking and the blocked driver’s reaction, andto note the type of reaction (horn honking or beam-ing). The second observer was instructed to note thetype of the blocked car (one of six categories rangingfrom small cars to luxury cars, based on the ratings ofthe French automobile association), the color of theblocked car, the sex of the blocked driver and his orher estimated age (one of four age groups), and thepresence/absence of passenger(s) in the blocked car.Two 2-hr observational periods were defined for ob-servations: the first from 9 to 11 a.m. and the secondfrom 3 to 5 p.m. Five locations with roughly the samevolume of automobile traffic and a traffic light wereused. The order of the car color was randomized foreach location and observational period.

Two dependent variables were analyzed to evaluatethe aggressiveness of the blocked drivers. The first de-pendent variable was the time latency period betweenthe blocking and the observation of horn-honkingbehavior or beaming behavior. The second was thedifference between the frequency of horn honkingand beaming. Pre-experimental measures were per-formed with 22 undergraduate male students and 19undergraduate female students who had their drivinglicense for at least 2 years to determine the degree towhich the two behaviors were aggressive. Participantswere asked to imagine drivers waiting at a traffic lightand blocked by a car while the traffic light was green.They were then asked to evaluate which of the twobehaviors—horn honking or beaming—seemed to bethe most aggressive behavior. All but one (97.6%) saidthey judged horn-honking behavior to be the moreaggressive behavior whereas one participant (2.4%)judged that both behaviors have the same aggressive-ness level. In light of these results, horn honking wasconsidered as the most aggressive behavior displayedby the blocked drivers.

RESULTS

The means of time latency between the beginningof the blocked period and the horn honking and/or

Aggr. Behav.

168 Gueguen et al.

TABLE I. Horn-Honking/Beaming Response Time (in Seconds), by Gender of the Blocked Drivers

Car color

Red Blue Green Black White

Male motorists 5.45 (1.60) 6.32 (1.30) 5.85 (1.35) 6.08 (1.53) 6.19 (1.28)N = 47 N = 50 N = 48 N = 51 N = 48

Female motorists 7.16 (1.46) 8.15 (1.58) 8.06 (1.80) 8.37 (1.68) 7.97 (1.83)N = 37 N = 33 N = 36 N = 38 N = 34

Note. Values in parentheses are Standard Deviation.

TABLE II. Percentages of Horn-Honking and Beaming Behav-ior, by Gender of the Blocked Drivers

Car color

Red Blue Green Black White(%) (%) (%) (%) (%)

Male motoristsHorn honking 46.8 26.0 25.0 21.6 20.8Beaming 53.2 74.0 75.0 78.4 79.2

Female motoristsHorn honking 32.4 21.2 16.7 21.1 14.7Beaming 67.6 78.8 83.3 78.9 85.3

beaming according to the sex of the drivers are pre-sented in Table I.

To account for the effects that the variables mayhave had, a 2 (driver gender) × 5 (car color) anal-ysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied.1 A main ef-fect of car color was found (F (4, 412) = 5.31, P <

.001, η2p = .05) with post hoc tests revealing that the

red condition was significantly different from the bluecondition (least significant difference (LSD) test, P =.002), the green condition (LSD test, P < .001), theblack condition (LSD test, P = .03), and the whitecondition (LSD test, P = .01). Finally, no significantdifference was found between the blue, the green, theblack, and the white car color (LSD test, P > .10). Amain effect of gender was found (F (1, 412) = 172.52,P < .001, η2

p = .30) revealing that men reacted morerapidly than women. No interaction was found be-tween the car color and the gender of blocked drivers(F (4, 412) = 0.63, P = .64, η2

p = .01).The frequency of horn honking (considered as the

most aggressive behavior displayed by the blockeddrivers) and beaming is presented in Table II.2

A 2 (driver gender) × 5 (car color) log-linear anal-ysis was applied and revealed a main effect of carcolor (χ2

(4,N=422) = 13.89, P = .008, φ = .18). Follow-up pairwise comparisons revealed that the red condi-

1Preliminary analyses revealed no effect of the observational period,location, and driver’s car category.2We found no effect of the observational period, location, and driver’scar category.

tion was significantly different from the blue condi-tion (χ2

(1,N=167) = 5.81, P = .03, φ = .17), the greencondition (χ2

(1,N=168) = 7.13, P = .008, φ = .20), theblack condition (χ2

(1,N=173) = 7.44, P = .006, φ = .20),and the white condition (χ2

(1,N=166) = 9.81, P = .002,φ = .24). However, no significant difference was foundbetween the blue, the green, the black, and the whitecar color (P > .20). Neither the main effect of thedrivers’ gender (χ2

(1,N=422) = 2.32, P = .13, φ = .07)nor the interaction effect (χ2

(1,N=422) = 2.87, P = .72,φ = .08) was statistically significant.

DISCUSSION

In this field study, we found that male and femaledrivers blocked by a car after a traffic light turnedgreen reacted more rapidly and in a more aggressiveway when the frustrator drove a red-colored car. Theseresults confirm our hypothesis that exposition to redcolor enhances aggressiveness. This effect was foundboth with males and females.

These results are interesting because they contra-dict some studies which found that red is associatedwith greater attractiveness [Elliot and Niesta, 2008;Gueguen, in press; Niesta Kayser et al., 2010; Robertset al., 2010]. However in these studies, only the attrac-tiveness of targets wearing red clothes compared toother colors was examined, which was not the samebehavioral evaluation as in our own experiment.

Nevertheless, these results are in accordance withHill and Barton [2005] who stated that red enhancesaggressiveness in humans. These authors found thatmore matches were won by fighters wearing red out-fits. However, these results were explained by otherresearchers as a sign of a “referee effect” that favoredfighters in red outfits [Hageman et al., 2008]. In thesame way, Rowe et al. [2005] argued that the color ofthe outfit affects the opponent’s visibility that is cru-cial for avoidance and interception, and for anticipat-ing behavior. Therefore, a fighter dressed in red couldhave a visual advantage of being able to anticipatehis opponent’s moves. Our results seem more to con-firm Hill and Barton’s explanation that red enhances

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Color and Aggressiveness 169

aggressiveness in humans. However, in their study, itwas not possible to separate the possible effect of the“wearer” and the effect of the observer. This was notthe case in our study given the fact that it was foundthat red clearly enhanced aggressiveness. In this exper-iment, only the behavior of the drivers was examined,which excluded a possible “wearer effect,” and we ex-amined the behavior of drivers exposed to a red stim-ulus and not to drivers driving a red car. It could nowbe interesting to examine why this level of aggressive-ness was expressed by drivers blocked by a red car.Previous studies found that exposition to the colorred was associated with a high level of arousal and ex-citation [Gerard, 1958; Goldstein, 1942; Jacobs andHustmyer, 1974; Wilson, 1966]. It could be interestingto duplicate this experiment using a driving simulatorto evaluate the levels of arousal and excitation and tocorrelate these levels with behavioral aggressiveness.An additional explanation for the effect of red on ag-gressiveness is that the effect of red might be the resultof stereotypes people have about drivers of red cars.It has been found that red is a color frequently associ-ated with sport cars in France and these sport cars areusually driven by male “show-offs” [Mermet, 2010].Thus, in our study, aggressiveness could be explainedby a negative perception associated with a man whodrives a red car.

This experiment has some limitations. We testedonly one car model. Doob and Gross [1968] used thesame driver frustrator technique to manipulate thestatus of the frustrator by manipulating the model ofthe car. They found that a high-status frustrator expe-rienced longer latency responses from drivers than alow-status frustrator. In our experiment, the car usedwas a middle-class model. It could then be interestingto see if the red-car effect persists when the frustratordrives a high-status model. A pre-experimental testconfirmed that the car color was clearly perceived asblack, white, red, blue, and green. The red, green, andblue cars have almost the same level of saturation andlightness but presented behavioral differences. How-ever, given that it was impossible to control all theaspects of the color in this experiment, it could be ar-gued that variations in physical color characteristicsare perhaps associated with behavioral change. Thus,

it could be interesting in future studies to performthe same experiment with a better experimental con-trol, for example by examining a driver’s reaction ina driving simulator in which the car color of the frus-trator could be more controlled. Likewise, examiningthe combination of the confederate’s car color andthe driver’s car color requires very large driver sam-ple sizes and it will be interesting in future studies toexamine this aspect. In this way, it could be possibleto test if drivers of red cars are or not more aggres-sive and if they also become more aggressive whenexposed to a frustrator driving a red car.

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