Women More Attracted To Men In Red

It's a symbol of courage and sacrifice, of sin and sexuality, of power and passion -- and now new research demonstrates that the color red makes men more alluring to women. In the United States, England, Germany and China, women found men more appealing when they were either pictured wearing red or framed in red, compared with other colors. The finding is reported in the August issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, published by the American Psychological Association. "Red is typically thought of as a sexy color for women only," said Andrew Elliot, PhD, of the University of Rochester and University of Munich. "Our findings suggest that the link between red and sex also applies to men." Twenty-five men and 32 women briefly viewed a black-and-white photo of a Caucasian man in a polo shirt, surrounded by a red or white matte. Using a nine-point scale, they answered three questions: "How attractive do you think this person is?" "How pleasant is this person to look at?" and "If I were to meet the person in this picture face to face, I would think he is attractive." Red warmed up women only. Women who looked at a man surrounded by red or white rated the man surrounded by red a little over one point higher on a nine-point scale of attractiveness, a statistically significant bump. Another experiment featured a man...
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Serotonin: A Critical Chemical for Human Intimacy and Romance

The judgments we make about the intimacy of other couples’ relationships appear to be influenced by the brain chemical serotonin, reports a new study published in Biological Psychiatry. Healthy adult volunteers, whose levels of serotonin activity had been lowered, rated couples in photos as being less intimate and less romantic than volunteers with normal serotonin activity. The approach involved giving amino acid drinks to two groups of volunteers in order to manipulate blood concentrations of the amino acid tryptophan, which is a vital ingredient in the synthesis of serotonin. One group received drinks that contained tryptophan. The other group received drinks that did not contain tryptophan. They were then asked to make judgments about sets of photographs of couples. Differences in the judgments made by the two groups reflected changes in their serotonin activity. “Serotonin is important in social behavior, and also plays a significant role in psychological disorders such as depression,” explained Professor Robert Rogers of Oxford University, who led the research. “We wanted to see whether serotonin activity influences the judgments we make about peoples' close personal relationships.” The volunteers who received the drink without tryptophan consistently rated the couples in the photos as being less ‘intimate’ and ‘romantic’...
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