Red is commonly described as the colour of fire, danger, passion and power.
However, according to a recent study on male behaviour, a woman in red means one thing… she'll ‘put out’ on the first date.
Researchers and psychologists from the University of South Brittany, France questioned 120 male students and asked them to judge a woman’s ‘sexual intent’ based on an image of a 20-year-old woman wearing an ordinary T-shirt.
The volunteers were split into four groups and were shown an image of the woman wearing a red, blue, green or white shirt.
Each participant studied the images for 30 seconds and were asked to rate, on a scale of one to nine, how attractive she was and how likely she was to have sex on the first date.
Researchers discovered that the majority of men from the study rated the woman dressed in a scarlet-hued item of clothing, as being more likely to sleep with a man on the first date than those in white, blue and green.
“Studies have shown that red is connected to lust and romantic love as well as to female fertility,” explains a spokesperson from the study.
“For the first time, our experiment shows clothes have the ability to lead men to perceive a woman wearing a red T-shirt as having greater sexual intent than one wearing blue, white, or green.”
Or of course, a woman’s reason behind wearing red could be because… she likes the colour.
Explaining what she thinks about the study’s findings, relationship expert Dr Pam Spurr and author of Sex Academy, told HuffPost Lifestyle: I'm not surprised by this research that scarlet-clad women really do come across as ‘scarlet’ women primed for sex.
“Whether or not you intend the colours you wear to reveal intimate things about you they do! We see red as the colour of passion and daring - this holds true for our world and in the animal kingdom.
“It usually takes bags of confidence to wear red adding to this overall affect that you are both confident enough to carry off this powerful colour as well as having sexual confidence.”
Wearing a bright colour doesn’t only give men a buzz, but they can also increase confidence, says Dr Spurr.
“We can use colour to mask our true feelings. And I often recommend that if someone is feeling down-spirited, they should shed their black wardrobe and put on colours with more impact.
“It's a positive upward cycle because people respond to them differently once they’re in brighter shades. Others expect them to be more upbeat and once you feel those expectations your mood tends to rise at least a bit.”
The study's findings were published in Journal of Social Psychology.
