How Does Romantic Red Influence Behavior

Andrew J. Elliot and Daniela Niesta’s article called “Romantic Red: Red Enhances Men’s Attraction to Women” focuses on the color red and how it influences behavior. The romantic red effect hypothesizes that red prompts men to perceive women as more attractive and sexually desirable. The color red is a symbol for romance and sex. Many people associate red with passion, lust, and love. The romantic red effect fits in with the color-in-context theory. The color-in-context theory proposes that colors have specific meanings that have connotations for psychological functions. The romantic red hypothesis and the color-in-context theory relate because Elliot showed if certain colors have a specific meaning, the way that color is seen produces a certain affect, behavior, and cognition associated with that stimuli. His work also showed that the color red has a positive behavior effects in a relational context yet has a negative meaning in an achievement context.

Experiment three examined the effect of the color red to the achromatic color gray and if the effect of red was beyond judgements of attractiveness to sexual attraction and likability judgements. Participants were randomly assigned to groups, one with the red condition and the other with the gray condition. The men were given two photos of a female on a red background and a female on a gray background. The men viewed the photo for an unlimited amount of time and filled out two separate questionnaires after viewing the photos. The independent and dependent variables were operationalized by asking questions in various ways about how attractive the female was by using a number scale to answer the questions. The result of this experiment was that the female on the red background was perceived as more attractive than the female on the gray background, proving the hypothesis is