Little Red Dress

red
It is said that men are more attracted to woman in a red dress as opposed to other colors. This idea is portrayed in the movie The Matrix when the main character is distracted by a woman in a little red dress during one of his conversations. The down side to this idea is that a good amount of woman tend to feel more threathed when they see other woman in red. The colors we wear are said to say a lot about our character and red happens to be that one color that gets our attention, positivitely and negatively. In short, the men LOVE it and the woman in general HATE it.  But why?

The University of Rochester, Trnava University and the Slovak Academy of Sciences as well as the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin did similar studies. Their studies suggest when woman see other woman in red, they are more likely to guard their men because the lady in the red dress poses as a threat, a sexual one to be specific. The assumption, being woman in red dresses are more sexual, is automatically drawn from the woman who were observing other woman in different colors, same dress, just different colors, white in comparison to red and red in comparison to green. 3 experiements were done by the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin using hundreds of woman. The same woman whose face was blurred in the photo was judged to be more as a threat and more sexual when her white dress was photshopped to be the color red.
Of the females doing the judging their own psychological factors, society and history all contributed to their decision to believe they would feel a lot more safer if their man was around the woman in the red dress. All these of these factors have influenced the color red and decided that it is a sexually appealing color. According to the studies and Adam Pazda, a graduate student from the University of Rochester, “It’s not just a pretty thing in our environment that adds to the aesthetic experience in the world. Behind the scenes, it can affect us psychologically in the way we perceive others or ourselves.” For instance, Pazda added than even a 2008 study on male subjects showed that men, in short, view woman in the color red to be a “signal of sexual receptivity.”
Questions asked in the sudy were “How interested in sex is she?” and “How seductive is she?” Not surprisingly, the woman in the red dress recieved derogatory comments from the from the woman who were judging them. The green color was added to replace the white because white is highly associated with virginity and purity. When the green color was compared to the red color, there were similar results. Good with the green, watchful of the red.
However, there is always an exception. Not all woman despise other woman in red. Several women interviewed by ABC News viewed the color positively. Some woman feel the color suggests confidence and pride. Researcher Pazda said “You might think twice about wearing red to send off the wrong vibes.” In conclusion, if you do decide to wear red, especially a little red dress, you might be perceived negatively by other women, but not all.
http://http//www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3268

2 thoughts on “Little Red Dress

  1. Abigail Kennedy

    I was a little skeptical of the Red Dress Effect, but I looked into it and it seems to be legitimate! I checked out the Rochester study, and it seemed to be well conducted and to draw good, statistically significant conclusions. I wanted to see if there were other studies that replicated and echoed the power of the red dress, and found another study called “Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.” In this study, researchers conducted a lot of different, randomized observations that found the same result: even just the color red (not necessarily in dress-form, they did the observation with pictures of a woman in a red t-shirt) can suggest in male minds that a woman is more sexual and interested in sex. All of their findings were based off of a wide array of heterosexual and bisexual men from many ethnic backgrounds, and were statistically significant. My question is whether this sensitivity to the color red is genetic or cultural. Does the color red set off signals in the brain as a natural indication of sexual receptiveness (like red on a female baboon’s face does to a male baboon) because of some biological reason, or is it that society has created the association between the color red and sex (like portraying sexually promiscuous women in the color red repeatedly in movies, TV, and magazines) and conditioned us to make the link? I don’t know the answer, but it’s an interesting question.

  2. Autumn Dugger

    I never thought of a color as threating maybe bold but not threating. I agree that different colors do display a persons personality well and can be a good judge of character but I do not think they are going to still a significant other. The color is distracting, bold and the universal sex symbol in the color world. I will always look at the color red differently because of this post. Very interesting.

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