I used paint to manipulate the coloration of first-year collared lizard males in the field to test whether conspicuous coloration increases risk of predation and/or aggression from dominant same-sex conspecifics, or resulted in decreased activity as a consequence of either or both increased attention from predators or socially dominant conspecifics. First-year collared lizard males are a good system for this study because their coloration is less developed than that of older males, they may suffer significant predation pressure, and instead of defending territories, they use stealthy tactics to avoid aggression from older socially-dominant males. To test these potential costs, I enhanced the coloration of first-year males in a conspicuous group by painting them similar to older territorial males, used brown paint similar to that of conspecific females to alter coloration in an inconspicuous group, and painted a control group with water. I then recorded census and focal observation data on these males for 40 d to examine survivorship, receipt of aggression by dominant males, and two indices of their activity; the number of censuses when first-year males were emergent, and their rates of travel. Both rates of predation and the frequency of aggressive acts received from territorial males were low overall and did not differ among the three treatment groups. Moreover, males in the three treatment groups did not differ in either the number of censuses when they were sighted or their rates of travel. These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that conspicuous coloration increases risk of predator attack or aggression from dominant conspecific males, suggesting that other costs may explain the observation that conspicuous coloration develops gradually in first-year collared lizard males.