Men in red: A reexamination of the red-attractiveness effect

Abstract

Elliot, Kayser, Greitemeyer, Lichtenfeld, Gramzow, Maier, and Liu (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(3), [399][400][401][402][403][404][405][406][407][408][409][410][411][412][413][414][415][416][417] 2010) showed that presenting men in front of a red background or with a red shirt enhances their attractiveness, sexual desirability, and status in the eyes of female observers. The purpose of the present research was to gain further insights concerning the robustness and the ecological validity of this red effect. In two experiments, we replicated the basic paradigm used by Elliot et al. Experiment 1 was a close replication of the first experiment in their original series. We presented the photo of a young man used by Elliot et al. on either a red or white background and asked participants (N = 89, female subsample n = 72) to rate it with regard to perceived attractiveness. Experiment 2 (N = 32) represents a somewhat more complex version of the first experiment; we increased the variance of the stimuli by showing photos of multiple men wearing different apparel styles (formal and casual, respectively). We did not find any significant impact of red in either of the studies. What we found, however, was a significant effect of apparel style with attractiveness ratings being higher for men wearing formal apparel than for men wearing casual apparel. Our results question the robustness and the ecological validity of Elliot et al.'s finding. On a more general level, they further point to limitations arising from (often necessary) restrictions in experimental designs.Keywords Replication . Color . Attractiveness . Red effect . Status Elliot et al. (2010) presented a series of experiments suggesting that the color red enhances male attractiveness and sexual desirability as perceived by women. They further presented evidence suggesting that this effect is mediated by an increase in perceived status. Basically, all seven experiments reported by Elliot et al. followed the same between-subjects design. Participants viewed the photo of a male target person whom they had to judge with regard to different variables, such as "perceived attractiveness," "sexual attraction," and "perceived status" (original variable labels used by Elliot et al.). The color of the background (Experiments 1-3) or the depicted man's shirt (Experiments 4-7), respectively, was manipulated as being either red or a contrasting color, e.g., white (see Table 1 for further details on the specific experiments). An enhancing effect of red was found in five of five experiments for perceived attractiveness and in three of three experiments for sexual attraction (note: in some experiments, more than one dependent variable was used). The mediation of the red effect via an increase in status could be further demonstrated in all three experiments where this variable was addressed via two different approaches: 1) the experimental-causal-chain approach, and 2) the measurement-of-mediation approach.The accumulated results of Elliot et al. (2010)...

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