Comments like the one pictured above have been the brunt of our family jokes for my entire life. My brother and I are the outer two brunette people pictured above and my biological, same mom, same dad, same everything sister is the red head in the middle. This confuses everyone who meets us and it is completely normal for us to have to explain that we really are blood-related sisters. We lovingly joke how no one likes redheads and that her ginger kids could be extremely ugly one day but it is all in good fun and she knows how to dish it back. Our joke is actually a reality as shown in recent studies.

Nicolas Guéguen from the Université de Bretagne-Sud, in France, recently did a study on different hair colors and how attractive they are to other people. A female would go to a nigh club and see how many men approached her per night. The experiment lasted one hour per night for sixteen nights within four weeks. The female subjects changed their hair color four different times to four different colors through wigs. The results showed that 127 men approached the blond, 84 approached the brunette, 82 approached the black haired woman, and only 29 approached the redhead. This was parallel to other research which showed that 80% dislike redheads.

Two other researchers, Viren Swami and Seishin Barrett, psychologists at the University of Westminster, did almost the same experiment and found similar results. A woman subject, naturally brunette, dyed her hair blond and red to see the different number of men she would attract by sitting at a bar for an hour over several weeks. 60 men approached the blond, 42 approached the brunette, and only 18 approached the redhead. During this period, researchers took a survey from the men at the clubs and from pictured of the subject, it was determined that the brunette was the most attractive, contrary to the study.

The results were similar and may make some convinced of the attraction,\. There are many things right about the experiment but also many things wrong with this study. First, these two studies look at women and how attractive they are to men, not vice versa. Secondly, there are few observations recorded so we can’t know for sure. Lastly, this study is done in the UK so we do not know how the result would differ for us in the US. The best thing, in my opinion, is keeping the women as the controls, having only the hair change. This keeps the facial features constant while still testing only the hair color, instead of having a totally different person.

Maybe next time, I’ll hold back from making fun of my sister’s genetics because this is a more serious matter than I thought.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-raj-persaud/redheads-psychology_b_1911771.html