While watching the NFL draft the other day, a woman at the bar lamented about how highlights for players from all over the SEC displayed their prowess against the local university. I explained Red Dress Effect to her and the bartender. Obviously these football players were not women in red dresses.

Red can draw attention. So maybe if someone is going through a bunch of highlights to pick just one, the one with the bright red team could be selected over others. To really know, someone would need to go through the draft highlights and identify all the opposing teams in all the clips. Then compare the prominent color of shirts verses the predominance of the color. Next would be to experiment by having people select clips and see whether they pick red jerseyed players getting beaten over others.

Probably what would be found is no significant difference in red being selected over other colors. This would be consistent with red cars not really getting significant more speeding tickets than other cars.

Oh… And her complaint could be just confirmation bias. If she believed people do not respect her university’s football team, then any time they were portrayed in a negative light would confirm for her this belief.