Why Seeing Red Puts Men in the Mood for Love
I’ve written before about the link between the colour red and attractiveness. Women in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycles prefer to wear red clothing, and women who wear red are seen as more attractive. We also know that men who wear red clothes when they play sports are more likely to win, probably because the colour boosts their confidence or drains the fighting-spirit of their opponents.
This all makes sense if we consider the coloured sexual ornaments of other members of the animal kingdom. A female chimpanzee’s bright red backside advertises fertility, and the most testosterone-fuelled males often invest their internal resources on the development of striking red displays, such as the red belly of the male stickleback or the red plumage of the cardinal.
Pavel Prokop of Trnava University and Martin Hromada of the University of Presov, both in Slovakia, recruited 150 students for the most comprehensive study of clothing colour preferences so far. The research participants completed an online survey. First they reported on the colour of their own clothing. They also chose outfits they’d prefer to wear in a number of different situations, such as going on a date or to a party, or when visiting grandparents or working in the garden. Some of these situations, of course, are more closely associated with encountering potential mates. So, are men and women more likely choose to wear red clothing when the prospect of finding a new partner is high?
The researchers found that women were more likely to be wearing red than were men. 22% of the women wore red on the day they completed the survey, but the same was true of only 8% of men. When asked to choose an outfit for a situation in which the probability of meeting a potential mate was low, both men and women were unlikely to choose red clothing. But when the likelihood was high — when they were asked to imagine choosing an outfit for a party or a date — women were much more prone to choose something in red. More than twice as likely as they’d be to choose red for other, more mundane activities.
Surprisingly, men were no more likely to wear red in either type of situation. If red gives men a competitive edge, one might expect them use a red shirt to ward off rivals, clearing a path to their preferred potential partners. But perhaps if women don’t find red clothing as attractive on a man as men find it on a woman, the costs of wearing red offset the benefits.
This doesn’t appear to be the case for women. Men find red attractive, and women — perhaps even without realising it — are cued into this preference, and choose to wear red when they want to attract a man. And men, with our tiny brains, rush right towards women wearing red as though we were bulls hypnotised by a toreador’s red cape.
Prokop, P., & Hromada, M. (in press). Women use red in order to attract mates. Ethology. Read summary
The content of this post first appeared in the June 2013 episode of The Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast.
