Human colour in mate choice and competition

Abstract

The colour of our skin and clothing affects how others perceive us and how we behave. Human skin colour varies conspicuously with genetic ancestry, but even subtle changes in skin colour due to diet, blood oxygenation and hormone levels influence social perceptions. In this review, we describe the theoretical and empirical frameworks in which human colour is researched. We explore how subtle skin colour differences relate to judgements of health and attractiveness. Also, because humans are one of the few organisms able to manipulate their apparent colour, we review how cosmetics and clothing are implicated in courtship and competition, both inside the laboratory and in the real world. Research on human colour is in its infancy compared with human psychophysics and colour research in non-human animals, and hence we present best-practice guidelines for methods and reporting, which we hope will improve the validity and reproducibility of studies on human coloration.This article is part of the themed issue 'Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application'.

The current and future state of animal coloration research

“…There are now large numbers of papers on reflectance spectra, including humans [10,11]. New discoveries in animal communication have led to work on fluorescence [12] and polarization [13][14][15], which can significantly enhance simultaneous communication and camouflage.…”

“…For example, behaviour can be based upon discrimination among good and bad potential mates, good and bad potential prey, or models and mimics. Discrimination does not simply depend upon the degree of differences among perceived entities (or image segmentation), but also depends upon prior experience and learning, both sensory and cognitive states of the individual, prior expectations about differences (from experience or evolution) and receiver psychology [11,[55][56][57]. We know very little about how these factors interact and bias the direction of colour pattern evolution.…”

“…Why are some cases of mimicry far from perfect and other cases superb [36,39]? How often are systems optimized for most efficient detection within particular tasks [11]? What is the relationship between signal function, signal diversity, signal function and species diversity [67]?…”

“…What is the relationship between signal function, signal diversity, signal function and species diversity [67]? How do signals originate [11]? Do species recognition and gender recognition processes favour different kinds of colour patterns than mate choice and other social processes [38,66]?…”

Information content of cheek and lip colour in relation to the timing of ovulation in women

“…Interpretation of 53 these findings is constrained by some methodological limitations. While most studies used 54 photography to analyse skin colour, which provides accurate measurements, they did not 55 always correct lighting conditions across photography sessions using colour standards, which 56 may have altered measurements [22,23]. Human studies usually rely on a restricted data set to 57 assess intra-cycle difference: e.g.…”