Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Red Effect

A tendency to perceive women wearing red as more attractive and men wearing red as more dominant.

The color red plays a significant role in communicating the fertility of females and the dominance of males throughout the animal kingdom. Female chimpanzees, for example, signal their period of greatest fertility each month by developing large red swellings around their anus and vulva, which increases their sexual appeal to males. The rank of male mandrills within their troops is largely determined by the degree of red coloration on their snout, rump, and genitalia, which signals their level of testosterone and mate viability to females.

Humans, too, are influenced by the color red in certain contexts.1 Although healthy reproductive human ...