Revisiting the Red Effect on Attractiveness and Sexual Receptivity: No Effect of the Color Red on Human Mate Preferences
Peperkoorn, Roberts and Pollet present three studies whose results did not support the prediction, drawn from colour-in-context theory, that red clothing raises attractiveness ratings. The work was conceived as an extension rather than an attack, differentiating colour effects by temporal context, that is, short-term against long-term mating. The first experiment had Dutch participants rate a woman in red, white and black on attractiveness and sexual attractiveness. The second replicated it with an American sample. The third was a deliberately larger-sample replication of a study that had previously found the effect. Across all three, totalling 830 men, the predicted effect was absent. The authors describe colour-in-context theory as the first theoretical framework for understanding colour effects in human mate preference, and test it on its own terms. The failure is specific to the attraction prediction and does not by itself refute the framework.
Peperkoorn, Roberts and Pollet present three studies whose results did not support the prediction, drawn from colour-in-context theory, that red clothing raises attractiveness ratings. The work was conceived as an extension rather than an attack, differentiating colour effects by temporal context, that is, short-term against long-term mating. The first experiment had Dutch participants rate a woman in red, white and black on attractiveness and sexual attractiveness. The second replicated it with an American sample. The third was a deliberately larger-sample replication of a study that had previously found the effect. Across all three, totalling 830 men, the predicted effect was absent. The authors describe colour-in-context theory as the first theoretical framework for understanding colour effects in human mate preference, and test it on its own terms. The failure is specific to the attraction prediction and does not by itself refute the framework.
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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). Three studies, 830 men in total, failing to support the prediction, including a larger-sample replication of a study that had found it. doi:10.1177/1474704916673841
Where we use it
- What Red Actually Does, Why We Act
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704916673841
DOI: 10.1177/1474704916673841