The
color red has great significance to us primates. In some circumstances it can
be a warning, but in others it can be a come-on. We humans lead a more complex
social life than most baboons, so how do we see red?
On
one hand we see it as a symbol for glory days with flashy uniforms while on the
other a reminder of gory days as it is a common color for medical academic
dress. So if we put the blood and glory on one side where else does red rule
our lives?
Like
our primate cousins, we see red as a warning sign so a red traffic light means
stop. And, of course, our mothers will have warned us about ‘scarlet women’
although I doubt if many heed that warning and see a red dress in the same light as a traffic instruction.
Some
new work by Elliot and Pazda in last week’s PLoS one has investigated the use of
red by women in the Internet dating game (1). They trolled through a couple of
websites and randomly picked 500 women from each to check out their preferred
colors.
Black
was a universally popular color for clothing, but what about the use of other
colors? Three studies were done. Firstly, they studied a group of women who
were interested in long-term relationships with implications for marriage. They
also studied a group that indicated that they were interested in casual sexual
relations, and finally, they checked out a group who thought that maybe they
might be interested in casual sex.
The
results were clear. Women wearing red were strikingly more interested in casual
sexual relationships than other colors such as blue, green, etc. So it seems
that the tradition of the scarlet woman is still alive and well in our cyber
world. I stress that pink isn’t a maybe-indicator of a half-hearted interest.
It’s red or nothing.
