No compelling positive association between ovarian hormones and wearing red clothing when using multinomial analyses

Abstract

Several studies report that wearing red clothing enhances women's attractiveness and signals sexual proceptivity to men. The associated hypothesis that women will choose to wear red clothing when fertility is highest, however, has received mixed support from empirical studies. One possible cause of these mixed findings may be methodological. The current study aimed to replicate recent findings suggesting a positive association between hormonal profiles associated with high fertility (high estradiol to progesterone ratios) and the likelihood of wearing red. We compared the effect of the estradiol to progesterone ratio on the probability of wearing: red versus non-red (binary logistic regression); red versus neutral, black, blue, green, orange, multi-color, and gray (multinomial logistic regression); and each of these same colors in separate binary models (e.g., green versus non-green). Red versus non-red analyses showed a positive trend between a high estradiol to progesterone ratio and wearing red, but the effect only arose for younger women and was not robust across samples. We found no compelling evidence for ovarian hormones increasing the probability of wearing red in the other analyses. However, we did find that the probability of wearing neutral was positively associated with the estradiol to progesterone ratio, though the effect did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance. Findings suggest that although ovarian hormones may affect younger women's preference for red clothing under some conditions, the effect is not robust when differentiating amongst other colors of clothing. In addition, the effect of ovarian hormones on clothing color preference may not be specific to the color red.

Using Sexual Selection Theories to Examine Contextual Variation in Heterosexual Women’s Orientation Toward High Heels

“…While this may suggest, tentatively, that the relationship between age and inclination to buy heels is curvilinear when measured across the lifespan, further work is required to examine these issues. We do note, however, that our findings for age differences in preference for heel height complement research on women's responses to other apparel, where preferences for attractive (red) coloration in clothing are observed in young but not older women, when their hormone levels are associated with greater risk of pregnancy (Blake et al, 2017).…”

Are Women More Likely to Wear Red or Pink at Peak Fertility? Close and Conceptual Replications with Novel Clothing Color Measures

“…Even so, Study 2 was still adequately powered to detect the expected association. Furthermore, our sample comprised young women (M age = 18.96) among whom the effect of fertility on wearing red should be most prominent (Blake et al, 2017;Eisenbruch et al, 2015), so we doubt that sample restrictions can be blamed for our results.…”

“…First, to directly replicate Beall and Tracy (2013), we limited ourselves to using indirect methods to categorize women into high-and low-conception risk groups. Though we made efforts to limit researcher degrees of freedom associated with indirect methods by committing to Wilcox and colleagues' (2000) method before analyzing our data, all indirect methods have validity problems (Blake et al, 2017;Gangestad et al, 2016). In their effort to conceptually replicate Beall and Tracy (2013), Eisenburgh and colleagues (2015) circumvented this issue by using ovarian hormones to assign fertility.…”

“…They found that women aged 18-22 were more likely to wear red during the fertile window than on other cycle days, with within-woman fluctuations in the ratio of estradiol to progesterone mediating shifts in wearing red. However, other researchers have not found associations between conception risk and the probability of wearing red (e.g., Blake, Dixson, O'Dean, & Denson, 2017;Prokop & Hromada, 2013), including a team that investigated the effect of peak fertility on "sexy" clothing choices in a within-subjects study involving 26 thousand diary entries from more than 1,000 women (Arslan, Schilling, Gerlach, & Penke, 2017).…”

The effect of schizotypy on the relationship between women's red clothing and perceived sexual interest

“…In addition, and in contrast to Guéguen andJacob (2012), Lynn, Giebelhausen, Garcia, Li, andPatumanon (2013) failed to find an effect of female waiters' clothing colour on men's tipping behaviour. Finally, and in contrast to Beall and Tracy's (2013) findings, Blake, Dixson, O'Dean, and Denson's (2017) research calls into question whether a reliable relationship exists between hormonal variation across the menstrual cycle and the use of red clothing. Others have questioned the veracity of the red-effect using logical and methodological arguments (e.g., Francis, 2013), as well as empirical ones (e.g., Hesslinger, Goldbach, & Carbon, 2015).…”