Game Theory - Red Is SUS! (Among Us)

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he uses color theory to HACK your Among Us games! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick, Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, JayskiBean, Tyler Mascola, Pedro Freitas, Jerika (NekoOnigiri), Warak and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: GeekyPeanut Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

And then his mouth opened up and he had these, these jaws. Next thing I know, a sharp tongue shout out of his mouth and stabbed him right through the eye. Can you describe who you saw? Well, he was short, two stubby legs, little oval-shaped visor, kind of round at the top. Had a cute backpack. Yeah, yeah, sure, we all look like that. What I'm interested in is his color. What color was he?

Excuse me, what? His color. What was his color? Um, I do not see the world that way. I am more than a bit offended that you would ask me a superficial question like that. This is literally a world where we're all identified by our color. Well, some of us like to think that we should be judged on the merit of our actions and not the color of our suits. Maybe one day you'll understand that. Good day, sir.

We lost our key witness. Let him go, boys. Hello internet. Welcome to Game Theory. Whoa! What are we doing here? An Among Us video? What is this? Like, 2020? Nope. No need to check the date on your watch page, loyal theorists.

Today, we're jumping back onto the Skeld with a new video on everyone's favorite multiplayer deduction game, Amuggis. Why now, of all times? Honestly, it's because of the new Netflix movie Glass Onion. There's an Among Us joke in like the first 10 minutes. Look, I saw you go in the engine room. You're the imposter. We all know it. You're thrown out of the airlock.

It's a no-brainer. I don't understand this at all. Nothing like a shirtless Daniel Craig in a bathtub to help rekindle interest. in your franchise, am I right? Anyway, all that was enough to get me to pick up the game once again. And when I did, I was struck by one huge detail that we'd overlooked in our past theories on how to win the game, a detail that is perhaps the highest IQ strategy of them all, the one crucial detail that makes a massive difference in any match that you're playing, even before the imposter is selected, your color. You see, every single emergency meeting, you always hear a single phrase uttered. The iconic

meme, red is suss. It has its own urban dictionary page. It's got its own. It's got its own t-shirt. Heck, it's even got its own 38 million views song from the channel Shiloh and Bros. Red is Suss. In a game that's all about avoiding detection and not raising suspicion, hearing those words is practically a death sentence. Of course, it got my theorist Cogs the turn in. Is red indeed Suss?

Well, obviously the actions of the player in the game are going to have a massive impact on whether they're suspected or not, there are also a lot of subconscious variables that play in every match. actors that affect the way that the game is going to go even before the imposter is chosen. Appearances do matter, and that's going to affect everything from job interviews in the real world to games of Among Us. And color is immediately one of the first traits that we see, which begs the question, is red actually the sussiest color in Among Us? What color is most likely to draw suspicion if you're the imposter? And best of all, what color choice is going to be the best at throwing off

suspicion so your name isn't tossed around during the next emergency meeting? Strap in theorists, because I'm about to blow this whole airlock wide open. Now, I'm sure we're all familiar with the phrase Never Judge a Book by its cover, right? There's just one problem with that. It is fundamentally opposed to our programming as human beings. We are designed to make snap judgments based on immediate appearances. It is essentially a leftover survival instinct.

If something looks dangerous, it's best to avoid it for our own survival. And one of the first factors that we're going to process is color. Color psychology is the study of how colors affect human mood and behavior. For instance, studies have shown that white-colored pills are associated with greater pain relief, and red pills are associated with stronger stimulant properties. Other studies have shown that the color red can prompt people to react with greater speed and force. Something as simple as color can even affect your performance on a test. When college students were given one of three colored numbers, red, green, or black,

and then asked to take a simple test, those with the red numbers scored more than 20% lower than those presented with either the green or black numbers. That is a huge difference, all from witnessing a different color prior to taking the test. On the complete other end of the spectrum, colors like blue have shown themselves to have a calming effect on people. Some studies have even shown that looking at the color blue literally release endorphins that help you physically calm down. All of these very real effects happening simply by looking at different colors. So, given that science has proven time and again that we have both physical and mental reactions to color, how can we use this knowledge to our advantage in a game like among us?

Which color is most likely to trigger your crew member's suspicions? Well, believe it or not, but one of the most suss colors isn't red, it's actually yellow. This is backed by both science and history. Let's just cover the science first, shall we? Our eyes use two different types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The rods are for vision at low levels of light. Cones, meanwhile, are the ones that are dealing with color. In fact, there are actually three different types of cones,

each one with sensitivity to a different color range. Because two of the three have reasonably high sensitivities in the green range, humans are able to process more shades of green than any other color. But not all greens are created equally. When you break down our biological sensitivity to light, our eyes work best at the light wavelength of 555 nanometers. That means that under normal lighting conditions, our eyes are most sensitive to a yellowish green color.

In other words, during an emergency meeting, if you're either green or yellow, you're going to be the one that your crewmate's eyes are naturally drawn towards. Making matters worse is that throughout human history, the color yellow has been associated with feelings, of deceit and betrayal. Why? Well, to find out, let's just take a trip back to 500 AD when post-classical art was beginning to take shape. During this time period, artists were working hard to recreate scenes from the Bible. There was just one problem with that. The Bible isn't very descriptive about what people were wearing. That meant that the artists had to make some creative choices. And one trend that stuck, they dressed Judas Iskariah, the disciple that betrayed Jesus and ultimately caused his crucifixion in yellow. This appeared in so many works of art at the time that people just eventually. began to associate the color yellow with traitors and liars. In 16th century Spain, for instance, they literally dressed those accused of heresy in yellow

capes to show their betrayal to the Spanish Inquisition. And the color has lived in infamy ever since. Banana! You see? Don't you just want to yeat it out of an airlock? But then what about green? I just talked about how green is the color that pops the best for our eyes. Is that a sussy color too?

No. At first glance, it certainly feels like green and guilt should go hand in hand. After all, it's the go-to color used by animation company. to show evil magic, maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Rasputin and Anastasia, Ursula and Little Mermaid, and Bruno's fortune-telling an incanto. It's a color that's constantly associated with treacherous villains, strange potions, toxicity.

That said, any negative connotations of the color are far outweighed by its natural sense of calm. Green is not a creative color. Sure, it might not be, but it is a relaxing color. In a 2020 study, 39% of people said that green made them feel relaxed and content. Again, this is one of those. primal instinct things. Our bodies want to be in nature. We are programmed to eat nice green plants because green means health and vibrancy. It means safety. As such, we're naturally inclined to trust green

things more than most other colors. So, green is good and yellow is suss. What other colors should we be on the lookout for? Well, in 2020, some researchers from University College London asked over 400 people to pick a color from a color generation website that they associated with feelings of guilt. Number two came in as black. And number one was our good old buddy, red. Let's just start with black. You see, black is an interesting color. It's naturally paired with dark emotions like sadness, depression, and fear.

It also feels dark and shadowy, as if you're trying to purposely hide something. That said, it might be hiding too well. A study of what car colors tend to get into the most accidents showed that the riskiest car to drive is a black car because its darker colors make it blend in more with the surrounding area. So, in an emergency meeting, even though black is paired with more negative connotations, if you keep your mouth shut, you should be fine. That said, if someone does bring up your name, be careful and play humble.

Black is actually considered to give impressions of high authority and dominance. Think about black belts in martial arts or the black diamonds on ski slopes. Both show a level of mastery and skill. You are one of the elite. It's why villains wear black. Same thing for judges. It puts them into positions of power and authority, which is why lawyers actually recommend that their clients do not wear black to court.

because it doesn't give people the impression that you're innocent or willing to listen. Instead, it makes you look powerful, aggressive, and in those contexts, guilty, something that you're also looking to avoid in an emergency meeting. Which now brings us back to where this whole question first started, red. How suss is red? Well, in addition to being highly associated with guilt like black, and being a bright, visible color like yellow, red has a few other things that are working against it.

First, red is obviously the color of danger and warnings. Like I mentioned at the top of the episode, seeing red makes you perform worse on tests. Red can also cause heart rates to rise and blood pressures to increase. All of these things are going to be working against your ability to convince others that you're innocent. But what deals red another killing blow is the psychological phenomenon called the recency effect. If it wasn't obvious, the recency effect is about how humans remember the most recent

information they're presented with best. A Harvard University study showed that approximately four pieces of information can be held in short-term memory at a given time. This is because most information in short-term memory only lasts between 15 and 30 seconds, meaning that people are going to tend to rely more heavily on the last few things they've seen when making a decision. How's that at all related to Among Us? Well, both the emergency meeting button and the animation it creates use the color red, which immediately gets people thinking about that color in a negative and suspicious light.

Red is the color on the top of everyone's mind going into the meeting because it's the one that they literally just saw flash across the screen. But the final nail in Reds coffin? The psychological effect of priming. Priming is when you expose the brain to something which then influences how you react to something else. Probably best explain through an example. If I show you these three words,

noodle, bowl, stew, and then I ask you to complete this word, S, blank, blank, P, what do you think you're going to say? Science shows that you're most likely to say the word soup over the other completely acceptable answer of soap, because I've already activated a bunch of words in your brain around the idea of soup. noodle, bowl, stew. Your brain has been primed to think about soup. If I had done the exact opposite

and said bath, bubble, shampoo, now I'm able to switch your brains priming and you would have been more likely to have thought soap first. Anyway, how does any of this apply to Among Us? Well, red is front and center in the game's artwork. He's the icon for the game on Twitter. He is the first color that people think of when they think of characters from this game. And not only is he the most prominent, he's also the most likely to be visualized as the imposter in all the marketing. Take a look at their holiday merch page. The first thing you see is Red as the imposter with fangs in a long tongue. There are two T-shirts with Red having an imposter shadow or holding a knife.

Heck, the official Among Us VR page on Steam has Red standing over a dead crewmate telling us to keep our mouths shut. Everything is priming your brain to connect the idea of Red and imposter. So that when the time comes to suggest who to eat out of the airlock, Red is always going to be the one that people pay attention to and throw under the bus. So if your goal when you become the imposter is to win, the best thing to do is start steering clear of red, black, and yellow. All of this being said, what color should you be picking if you don't want to immediately be called out?

Well, there are two routes depending on your gaming style. If you're an experienced player who wants to be involved in the emergency meetings, choose blue. Not only does the color blue release relaxation endorphins into the brain, it's also the color that science repeatedly shows is the most closely associated with trustworthiness. There is, however, one more solution that can keep you out of trouble, and that's by staying out of the minds of your fellow players.

In 2021, the game updated to add six more colors to the roster. Maroon, rose, coral, gray, tan, and banana. No, stop it. Now, based on everything we've talked about today, any of these could be a winning choice. Why? Because their strength is the exact opposite of red's weakness. While red is the poster child for all things among us,

none of these new colors have really seen the light of day, and they're played significantly less than any of the primary colors. In 2021, Intersloth released their statistics around the most and least played colors. Red, black, white, and rose were the top four, while gray, maroon, brown, and tan were rounding out the bottom. Banana and coral, meanwhile, were mixed into the lower middle. In short, all that means is that these new colors aren't primed for anything. And because they're not bright primary colors, they don't come with strong, pre-packaged emotional connotations. Pastels are just softer colors, and as such, they evoke softer emotions.

They're light and delicate. They're the supports rather than the leads. In meetings, you want people to focus on the big, loud, orange guy in the corner. Not the little old cream-colored you stand quietly off to the side. Tan, for instance, being a lighter version of brown, gives a sense of dependability and stability, and in design is used more as a background color. It's unassuming, which is perfect when you don't want people to start thinking about what you've been doing in the game. Meanwhile, gray is your other best choice.

It's also a pale color, but unlike banana and tan, it doesn't evoke feelings of anything, really. Gray is just the most blank of blank canvases. Also, have you taken a look at the maps recently? They all lean heavily into the grays as a color choice, which makes a lot of sense. It's a lot of machinery, spaceships, space stations, all things made out of gray metals. Other characters will notice a green character running past them, but gray? Not so much. And this holds true in real life, too.

Gray cars are actually the second least likely to be noticed on the roads because they blend in with their surroundings. So, there you have it. If you want to give yourself the best chance of not being called suss, your best choices are the newer, lighter colors like gray, tan, and banana. These are going to be doing the best job of keeping you out of the interrogation spotlight as long as you manage to keep your mouth shut. Blue, meanwhile, is a strong secondary choice, especially if you plan on being a more active player. But the biggest takeaway of all is that the memes are true. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Top dog of sussiness is, in fact, the king of the memes, red.

Not just because he's popular, but because people naturally associate red with guilt, with warnings, and because inner sloth has been sabotaging red every single game from the start with their marketing. It's not just a meme, it's science and psychology. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.