Khandis R. Blake, Barnaby J.W. Dixson, Siobhan M. O'Dean, Thomas F. Denson

Several studies report that wearing red clothing enhances women's attractiveness and signals sexual proceptivity to men. The associated hypothesis that women will choose to wear red clothing when fertility is highest, however, has received mixed support from empirical studies. One possible cause of these mixed findings may be methodological. The current study aimed to replicate recent findings suggesting a positive association between hormonal profiles associated with high fertility (high estradiol to progesterone ratios) and the likelihood of wearing red. We compared the effect of the estradiol to progesterone ratio on the probability of wearing: red versus non-red (binary logistic regression); red versus neutral, black, blue, green, yellow, multi-color, and gray (multinomial logistic regression); and each of these same colors in separate binary models (e.g., green versus non-green). Red versus non-red analyses showed a positive trend between a high estradiol to progesterone ratio and wearing red, but the effect only arose for younger women and was not robust across samples. We found no compelling evidence for ovarian hormones increasing the probability of wearing red in the other analyses. However, we did find that the probability of wearing neutral was positively associated with the estradiol to progesterone ratio, though the effect did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance. Findings suggest that although ovarian hormones may affect younger women's preference for red clothing under some conditions, the effect is not robust when differentiating amongst other colors of clothing. In addition, the effect of ovarian hormones on clothing color preference may not be specific to the color red.