Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 1-15-2018

Course Name

Social Psychology

Faculty

Adam Levy

Department

Psychology; College of Arts & Sciences

Abstract

Prior research has shown that women who wear red clothing or suggestive clothing are perceived as more attractive, having greater sexual intent, and having more negative qualities than women dressed in different colors or less suggestive clothing. This bias towards perceiving sexual intent may be evolutionary or may be due to people projecting their emotions onto others. The current study builds from this research by performing a 2 (color: white or red) x 2 (clothing type: suggestive or non-suggestive) between-subjects experiment. We hypothesized that women would be perceived as more attractive and as having greater sexual intent while wearing red and suggestive clothing rather than while wearing red and non-suggestive clothing or while in either of the white clothing conditions. Although we found no significant interaction between the color and clothing conditions, we did find multiple main effects. This suggests that either the color red or the suggestive clothing type will make a difference in perceptions of attractiveness and sexual intent, but when together, the effect is alleviated.

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