Single women going to New Year's Eve parties this year may want to wear something red if they want to meet a partner.
A new study has found that color makes women more attractive to men.
Researchers in Germany showed 120 men images of two identical photos of a woman in her twenties – against a white or red background.
The team did the same test, but also used a woman in her 50s. Men were then asked how sexually attractive the women were.
If pink makes guys wink, red makes them get married!: Hailey Bieber is pictured above in a pink dress in France in September this year and, right, in a red dress in New York City in August this year
Selena Gomez is pictured above wearing pink as she attended the Universal Music Group conference in September this year, and, right, in a jumpsuit in 2014
Despite seeing the same woman in two backgrounds, the men generally rated the woman with red behind her as more attractive.
The scientists weren't sure why red increased sexual attraction, but said it may be because the color can be a sign that a woman is fertile.
Writing in the study, published in the Journal for Experimental Social PsychologyThey said men may find red more attractive because of the “long-standing tradition (of) connecting red” with sexual activities.
“It could be that the color red activates cognitive representations of 'red light districts' in men,” they wrote.
There are rumors that red can make a person appear more attractive for years, with researchers suggesting this could be due to biological or cultural factors.
For the study, researchers recruited 60 men in their 20s with an average age of 25 years old and another 60 men aged about 53 years old.
They were all recruited in Dortmund, Germany, from a shopping center or on a university campus.
Participants were shown two images of a young woman in her twenties superimposed on a white or red background.
And two images of an older woman in her fifties – who had gone through menopause – on a white or red background.
The images are reduced in size to fill the central area of an A4 page, with the rest of the page colored red or white.
Men were shown all four images for five seconds each and then asked to rate their sexual attractiveness from one to nine, with one being the least attractive and five being the most.
For the young woman, she was rated 5.91 for sexual attractiveness on a red background by young participants, but 3.44 for the same on a white background – or 70 percent more attractive.
For the older woman, the younger participants rated her 2.22 on both white and red backgrounds.
By comparison, among the older men in the study, a young woman on a red background received an overall rating of 4.89, while on a white background she received a rating of 4.24.
For the older woman, they rated her 3.92 on a red background, but 4.22 on a white background.
The scientists said there was a significant difference in the scores for the young woman rated by young men, suggesting red was a factor.
But they found no significant difference between those for the older woman, suggesting another factor was at play.
“This could easily explain why the red effect is specific to the young woman,” the authors wrote.
Kendall Jenner pictured in a pink dress in April 2021 and a red dress while attending the MET Gala in New York City in September 2021
'(But) it could also be that red is seen as a signal for a woman's ovulation, and our old (woman) is clearly in menopause, so red is not a valid signal.'
The researchers, led by Dr. Sascha Schwarz – a psychologist at the Technical University of Dortmund – concluded: 'Regardless of whether one emphasizes the proximate social or the ultimate biological explanation for the link between red and sexuality, red can increase the attractiveness of increase men on women.”
Limitations of the study included that it relied on self-reports from men and did not examine participants' sexual orientation.