Looking for the right hue to paint your weight room? Try red--it may well enhance your performance. A new study says that the color red leads humans to react more forcefully. Per haps, the reaction is motivated by subconscious cues meant to prepare us for danger. Just like steroids, however, there's a down side. Because our reaction to red is based on sensing a threat, it can also lead to "worry, task distraction, and self-preoccupation, all of which have been shown to tax mental resources." In fact, the reaction may be linked to blushing:

"Red enhances our reac tions because it is seen as a danger cue," explains Andrew Elliot, at the Universityty of Rochester, a lead researcher in the field of color psychology. "Humans flush when they are angry or preparing for attack," he explains. "People are acutely aware of such reddening in others and it's implications."

Thirty students from fourth-through tenth-grade were asked to pinch and hold open a metal clasp after reading aloud a number on a card in the first, and students squeezed a hand grip as hard as they could after reading the word "squeeze". Subjects responded faster and with more force when the cue was red than they did when it was a comparable hue and brightness of blue or gray.

This is hard ly the first study showing the color red's aggressive impressions, but the obvious application of these new findings would be in the sports arena. Athletes wearing red are more likely to lose," just as--attention, all you fans of bright school walls--"students exposed to red before a test perform worse."

(Excerpted from THE ATLANTIC, wire edition.)