Wardrobe malfunction – three failed attempts to replicate the finding that red increases attractiveness

By Christian Jarrett  It’s one of the simplest, most evidence-backed pieces of advice you can give to someone who’s looking to attract a partner – wear red. Many studies, most of them involving men rating women’s appearance, have shown that wearing red clothing increases attractiveness and sex appeal. The reasons are thought to be traceable to our evolutionary past – red displays in the animal kingdom also often indicate sexual interest and availability – complemented by the cultural connotations of red with passion and sex. But nothing, it seems, is straightforward in psychology any more. A team of Dutch and British researchers has just published three attempts to replicate the red effect in the open-access journal Evolutionary Psychology, including testing whether the effect is more pronounced in a short-term mating context, which would be consistent with the idea that red signals sexual availability. However, not only did the research not uncover an effect of mating context, all three experiments also failed to demonstrate any effect of red on attractiveness whatsoever.  The simple picture that red increases attractiveness, especially in the eyes of men viewing women, had already been muddied by a large study published earlier this year that tried to extend the red effect to the context of waitress tipping, but which found, contrary to expectations, that men gave smaller tips to female servers wearing red. Also other recent papers f...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: evolutionary psych Replications Sex Source Type: blogs