Abstract
Prior research has shown that for women viewing men, perceiving the color red can enhance attractiveness judgments in some contexts. Additionally, an association exists between the processing of color words and the perception of color stimuli. The present studies examined whether processing the word red would lead to similar psychological effects of perceiving color stimuli. Specifically, we tested whether reading a description of a man wearing a red shirt (relative to other colors) can enhance women’s perceptions of the man’s attractiveness. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 provided support for this effect for red-gray and red-green contrasts. The findings are discussed with regard to grounded theories of cognition, which suggest that knowledge about color and experience of perceiving color are integrated in a multimodal fashion. Practical implications of the red effect for interpersonal perception and interaction are discussed along with general implications in the domain of color psychology.
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Notes
Ancillary analyses testing whether sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. bisexual) interacted with the focal variables failed to yield any significant interactive effects.
One outlier was omitted from the analysis; retaining the outlier yielded the following: t = 1.95, p = .053, d = .27.
In this experiment we did a more precise power analysis using the effect size obtained in Experiment 2 for the red-green comparison as an estimate (d = .31). This power analysis indicated that a sample size of 130 per condition would be needed to obtain power of .80 (p = .05). Thus, in this experiment we set an a priori target of 130 participants per condition, at minimum.
In addition to the experiments reported in the text, we conducted another experiment examining proximity to Valentine’s Day as a potential moderator of the red effect, with blue as the comparison color. Proximity to Valentine’s Day seems a good candidate as a moderator variable, because associations between red and romance may be particularly salient around this holiday, producing a stronger effect of red on perceived attractiveness. Blue is a particularly stringent chromatic comparison, because it has been shown to have positive associations that could be relevant to mate evaluation (e.g., high quality and competence, Labrecque and Milne 2011). The procedure of the experiment was similar to that of Experiment 3, excepting the collection of Valentine’s Day information, the absence of a no-color condition, the use of blue as a color comparison, and the presence of an age restriction of 18–35. The between-subjects color manipulation was instantiated via shirt description, with 103 participants receiving a red description and 107 receiving a blue description. The same perceived attractiveness measure from Experiment 3 was used (α = .93). For the Valentine’s Day variable, we created a dichotomous variable representing either close proximity to the holiday (within 1 week: n = 71) or distant proximity (outside of 1 week: n = 139); we also created a variable representing whether participation occurred before/during (n = 108) or after (n = 102) Valentine’s Day. The experiment did not yield significant findings for either of the Valentine’s Day interactions (Fs < .54, ps > .47), nor the color contrast (t[208] = −.27, p = .79). Thus, proximity to Valentine’s Day did not receive support as a moderator variable. Red-romance associations many not be as salient around this holiday as we had anticipated, and a more powerful test of this “association salience” idea could be carried out by directly priming participants with romance-relevant concepts (or not) prior to presenting them with red and mate-relevant targets to evaluate. The absence of a red effect in this experiment may point to a boundary condition to the effect – it may not emerge when processing the word red relative to blue. Given that some research using actual colors has observed a red advantage over blue, at least under some conditions (Buechner et al. 2015; Elliot et al. 2010; Roberts et al. 2010), the absence of an effect herein may either suggest that the effect is weaker for processing color words than for viewing actual color stimuli, or it may point to cultural specificity of the red effect, as nearly all of the work conducted with actual red and blue colors was conducted in England and Germany (for the potentially powerful impact of country, region, and even university on color associations, see Prado-Leon et al. 2014; Schloss et al. 2011). Future research is needed to further examine these possibilities.
It should be noted that “Asian” is a broad and diverse category, encompassing different countries and groups that may have very different color associations (see Jiang et al. 2014). Researchers interested in making race a central focus of their research in this area would do well to be precise in their sample selection, accordingly.
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All procedures performed in these studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional review board and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.
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Adam D. Pazda declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Andrew J. Elliot also declares that he has no conflicts of interest.
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Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J. Processing the Word Red can Enhance Women’s Perceptions of Men’s Attractiveness. Curr Psychol 36, 316–323 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9420-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9420-8