Physical Appearance, Attractiveness and Relationships: Is the Display Versus Avoidance of the Color Red a Strategic Mating Signal?

Abstract

The present article focuses on the role of situational factors -such as the color red -and their influence on what humans notice in others. Humans form impressions of others instantly. These impressions are predominantly based on physical appearance, which is part due to a person's search for indicators of a potential partner's fitness. Attractive individuals are associated with all sorts of positive qualities, whereas their less attractive counterparts are less favorably depicted. This perception process of physical attractiveness is associated with health in male and female faces, and from an evolutionary point of view, serves the survival and the reproductive success of the perceiver. The meaning of the color red for approach and avoidance behavior is demonstrated in a recent study, which shows that women's use (or avoidance) of red clothing, accessories, and make-up may serve as a subtle and strategic indicator of (missing) sexual interest.Keywords: Human sexuality; Attraction; Approach and avoidance behavior; Red; Attractiveness Social and Evolutionary Psychological Determinants of AttractivenessImagine you are on a dating website and come across Sally, an attractive woman, who displays a red shirt in her profile picture. Does the fact that Sally shows red in her attire imply that she is more interested to find a mate compared with Maggie, an equally attractive woman, who does not display red in her partner profile? Indeed, there is first evidence for a link between red and sexual attractiveness. When interested in casual sex, but not other types of relationships, women were more inclined to wear red on a dating website [1]. More generally speaking, recent studies suggest that men perceive women's appearance as more attractive and sexually desirable, if these women are paired with red [2].The question why humans care so much about physical appearance in the first place is an old one. For centuries, human beauty has occupied the minds of artists, poets and philosophers. One of the first, who studied beauty more systematically, can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, namely Pythagoras. The Greek mathematician and philosopher of the sixth century BC is said to have first systematically investigated physical attractiveness [3]. Like for the ancient Greeks, for Pythagoras beauty was a matter of the right proportions, or "golden ratios. " Those symmetrical rules were not only applied to human anatomy, but also applied to what was considered being beautiful in architecture, music and art [4].In psychological research, determinants of beauty and attractiveness were target of investigation with the purpose of exploring the nature of interpersonal attraction. Interestingly, it was not a hot topic in psychological research until the 1960's with some notable exceptions. Harris [5], for example, examined empirically assortative mating on a variety of factors (morphological traits like length of forearms, as well as psychological characteristics like intelligence). Hill [6] on his research on mate choice charac...

Displaying Red and Black on a First Date: A Field Study Using the “First Dates” Television Series

“…Alternatively, as noted above, daters were unaware of the attractiveness of their dating partners beforehand, and so may have employed a strategy of increasing their own attractiveness (wearing more black) while being more conservative in their signals of interest (wearing more red). From an evolutionary perspective, signaling interest to unattractive (potentially lower quality) partners should lower reproductive fitness ( Niesta Kayser & Schwarz, 2017 ). Further work might address how these different motivations manifest in real-world dating scenarios.…”

Antecedents of the red-romance effect: Men’s attractiveness and women’s fertility

“…The current study was conducted after the publication of Niesta Kayser et al (2016) [ 35 ]. It used the same material (e.g., pictures of stimulus persons), the same exclusion criteria, and the same main predictions, as the article it sought to replicate [ 33 ]. All participants gave informed consent and were thoroughly debriefed.…”

“…Women tend to prefer as partners men who possess traits associated with judgments of physical attractiveness. Consistent with good genes theories of sexual selection [ 31 – 33 ], physical attractiveness represents one indicator of desirable traits such as health, dominance, and high genetic quality. Because women have benefited reproductively from mating with such men, the presence of a highly attractive man may activate women’s mating goals.…”