Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Why must men be so . . . manish?
OK, So I try to dress modestly and appropriately. I try to keep in mind the struggles men deal with in regards to a woman's attire, but colour?!? really?!? I found this article on a popular science website (http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/the-red-dress-effect.html), which essentially links the colour red with lust. The study asked men if a model wearing a modest long sleeve tee-shirt appeared to be more interested in sex when she was wearing a white or a red shirt. According to 25 men (unsure ethnic/cultural background or age), the woman in red appeared "more open to sexual advances". REALLY?!?!? I love wearing the colour red. It makes me feel pretty, but if its giving guys the wrong idea . . . So, men in my life (i.e. Dad and Wes), is this true? Does this study have a hint of truth, or is it just a poorly designed study with undefined variables and a too-small sample size (ah statistics . . . )
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Hi Beck, so after reading though part of the the study I have these thoughts:
ReplyDeleteThe paper was based on 5 experiments using different groups of men
1) This study used a 27 men ages 18-22 from a undergraduate program in the US (interesting to note that the vast majority of men (75%) were Caucasian)
2) These men were enticed to participate by promise of extra credit (which could perhaps suggest that these are the types of guys who may need the extra credit (perhaps a proxy for intelligence?)
3) In their study they admit that the idea of the color red being arousing to men is not a new idea (around since 1942), previous studies done had mixed results.
4) This experiment itself showed that men when presented with pictures of women with either a red or white background found the women in the red background to be more attractive. However in real life Women do not spend a lot of time standing in front of red background (Take that as a warning to stay away from red brick buildings)
Experiment 2 consisted of 63 students (split evenly between men and women) and again the majority of the sample were caucasian (80%). This experiment is the same as the first experiment however the pictures of lady with the different color backgrounds was shown to both men and women. They found that men found the women with the red background to be more attractive then the women, however this is not a surprise as the estimated percentage of the population which is gay is about 5% so it makes sense that men on average would find a women more attractive then a women would find the same picture. Also red draws the eye more so it is likely that the men just spent more time looking at the picture with the red background then the white background. Lastly since all of the subjects were only focusing on one picture this does not give a good indication of real life as often there are many things happening around you and you rarely focus on one thing.
Experiment 3 was the same as the first two experiments however they were back to using only men. This time they introduced grey as they felt that since they could have grey in different shades that this would reduce the level that the red pictures stuck out. However, my question is REALLY?!?!?! there is no way that Grey sticks out the same amount as Red. So not surprisingly this experiment found that men preferred the women with the red background. This experiment also looked at sexual desirability and found that there was only a slight difference between grey and red effecting perceptions of sexual desirability (the difference was enough to be statistically significant however given the size of the sample and once again the skewness to caucasians question as to whether it is truly representative of the male population).
At this point I have become tired and am going to bed but here is a link if you find yourself interested in reading this study. My last thought on this point is psychology is stupid and their experiments are poorly designed and far to open to manipulation.
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/faculty/elliot/documents/ElliotNiesta_RomanticRed.2008.pdf
Amazing Wes that you took the time to look and comment on all this. Very good analysis. I guess that is why you are in that field. I would have just said - pshew - just a bunch of garbage. The studies kept a bunch of people employed for a period of time. Someone got a grant and needed to justify their time or get published because the university needed to increase its ratings.
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