Seeing red – sex appeal may not be color blind

We’re all looking for that edge to make us more appealing. And one study that’s got singles seeing red, so to speak, and is sparking interest, with women who wear red sending a sexy unspoken signal.

Andrew Elliot, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York has found that men think a woman in red or crimson clothes are sexier than if they’re wearing another color. “We only determined the result for attraction, males don’t value females in red as smarter, more likable, or as having a more respectable personality; they only rate her as sexier and more visually appealing,” he says.

Five studies were undertaken with around 125 heterosexual men (men with color blindness were excluded for obvious reasons). The men were shown photos of women “framed in red, white, gray, green, or blue, or with the woman in a red or blue shirt,” wrote Theresa Tamkins on cnn. Based on a seven-point scale, with seven being the sexiest and one the least sexy, Andrew Elliott discovered that the color red added 1.25 to the overall sexiness rating.

“We believe that red, due to the connection with hearts and Valentine’s Day and intimate apparel and things like that, assumes a sexy meaning,” says the research worker. “There’s also a theory – a rather intriguing possibleness – that there’s a profoundly embedded sort of propensity for heterosexual men to see red as an attraction prompt because that’s what occurs in the wild”

“Within our real world, we have a wallow of information that presents about smell, sight, words – who knows what determines the most variation in liking and behavior?” suggests Elliot. “My firm way of thinking is that if you introduce this to the real world and have women who are attracted in their date and wear a red outfit of some sort, they are transmitting the message to the male that he isn’t even aware of – they are sending a message that yep, I’m keen and unattached.”

The study also revealed that men are more likely to want to have sex with the woman in red than the woman in brown, and right now, research is being undertaken to see if the red effect works on women as well. And the researchers reportedly think it will. Red really does seem to be the color.



There is good news for those who prefer to hunt online, via dating websites , with women posing in red winning the majority of the male attention according to Hookmeup Online in Australia.

Another study – in Hamburg, Germany – showed that redheaded women get more sex than their blond and brunette counterparts! Says Dr Werner Habermehl in Britain’s The Daily Mail: “The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair color, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation.” And if you’re not a natural redhead, it seems that a bottle of red hair color can have the same affect…