The color red has been implicated in a variety of social processes, including those involving mating. While previous research suggests that women sometimes wear red strategically to increase their attractiveness, the replicability of this literature has been questioned. The current research is a reasonably powered conceptual replication designed to strengthen this literature by testing whether women are more inclined to display the color red 1 during fertile as compared with less fertile days of the menstrual cycle, and 2 when expecting to interact with an attractive man as compared with a less attractive man and with a control condition.
Analyses controlled for a number of theoretically relevant covariates relationship status, age, the current weather. Only the latter hypothesis received mixed support mainly among women on hormonal birth control , whereas results concerning the former hypothesis did not reach significance.
Findings thus suggested only mixed replicability for the link between the color red and psychological processes involving romantic attraction. They also illustrate the importance of further investigating the boundary conditions of color effects on everyday social processes.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Funder: Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft www. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Color conveys a wealth of social information.
The color red, in particular, has been implicated in a variety of social processes. Red appears to be relevant for a range of social contexts including power, dominance, anger, aggression [ 1 , 2 ] and, most relevant to the current article, romantic attraction. For example, across a range of cultures, the color red is associated with love, lust, sexuality, and passion [ 3 , 4 ].
