Leonard Peperkoorn
Evolutionary psychologist whose three studies, covering 830 men, found no red effect on attraction.
Who they are
The project began as an extension rather than an attack, aiming to differentiate colour effects by temporal context, separating short-term from long-term mating.
One of the three studies was deliberately a larger-sample replication of a study that had previously found the effect.
Key papers
Peperkoorn, L. S., Roberts, S. C., & Pollet, T. V. (2016). Revisiting the red effect on attractiveness and sexual receptivity: no effect of the color red on human mate preferences. Evolutionary Psychology, 14(4).
Key ideas
Dutch and American samples rated a woman in red, white and black, and none of the three experiments supported the prediction.
Colour-in-context theory is described in the paper as the first theoretical framework for understanding colour effects in mate preference, and the authors test it rather than dismiss it.
The failure is specific to the attraction prediction, not to the framework.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1177/1474704916673841