Yellow and social perceptions of racing cyclists' sportspersonship: Proposing an inter-contextual analysis

Through inter-contextual designs, the present set of experiments sought to explore whether the colour yellow would impact on social perceptions of sportspersonship exclusively in relation to competitive cycling. In Experiment 1 (N = 149), a silhouette image of a cyclist on a yellow background yielded lower perceptions of sportspersonship in comparison to grey or to the context of motocross, regardless of the colour. That interaction was conceptually replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 146) while changing measures (i.e., adaptation of the World Anti-Doping Code) and the context of comparison to sprinting. Furthermore, female and male observers' scores did not differ significantly thereby suggesting that yellow impacted on perceived sportspersonship similarly across gender. On the whole, those findings suggest that yellow can generate negative impressions of racing cyclists because, with years, this colour took on a meaning of opportunism from frequent pairings with doping. We close with discussing a number of limitations and future research avenues.