http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1895 ... d_RVDocSum
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
andye@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu
In many nonhuman primates, the color red enhances males' attraction to females. In 5 experiments, the authors demonstrate a parallel effect in humans: Red, relative to other achromatic and chromatic colors, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable. Men seem unaware of this red effect, and red does not influence women's perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men's perceptions of women's overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence. The findings have clear practical implications for men and women in the mating game and, perhaps, for fashion consultants, product designers, and marketers. Furthermore, the findings document the value of extending research on signal coloration to humans and of considering color as something of a common language, both within and across species. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.
PMID: 18954199 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE
http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/11/1530
Mediation of the Negative Effect of Red on Intellectual Performance
Markus A. Maier
University of Munich,
maier@edupsy.uni-muenchen.de
Andrew J. Elliot
University of Rochester,
andye@psych.rochester.edu
Stephanie Lichtenfeld
University of Munich
This research examines the hypothesis that an attentional process grounded in avoidance motivation—local relative to global processing—mediates the negative effect of red on intellectual performance. This hypothesis was tested in a series of experiments using two approaches to documenting mediation. Experiment 1 established that the perception of red undermines IQ test performance. Experiments 2a and 2b documented mediation via the experimental causal chain approach, and Experiment 3 documented mediation via the measurement of mediation approach. This represents the first demonstration of a mediational process in the domain of color psychology. A call is made to broaden priming research to include color stimuli.
Key Words: red • avoidance • focus of attention • performance • mediation
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u411745562036753/
Werner Schuler1 and Elke Hesse1
(1) H. Zoologisches Institut der Universität, Berliner Strasse 28, D-3400 Göttingen, Federal Republic of Germany
Received: 10 April 1984 Accepted: 31 August 1984
Summary Young chicks were offered a choice of warningly coloured black and yellow and non-warningly coloured green (or olive) prey. Unfed chicks were given palatable painted mealworms on their first day. They directed their first peck at both colour types at the same probability; however, they ate the warningly coloured ones at a much lower rate. This is due to an inhibition of attack which becomes effective after pecking. Chicks which were a few days old showed the same behaviour. Since the control prey was in this case painted with an olive mixture containing the same colours as the warningly coloured mealworms, it can be concluded that the inhibition is caused by the black and yellow coloration. With accumulating positive experience of the chicks, the inhibition decreased. For permanent avoidance it must therefore be supplemented by unpleasant experience. Accordingly, chicks handled the unpalatable black and yellow ringed caterpillars of Tyria jacobaeae only a few times and always for a short period when offered repeatedly. The inhibition caused by the black and yellow pattern is attributed to a genetically fixed predisposition to avoid warningly coloured black and yellow prey which is the result of evolutionary adaptation.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/rj7102615q6u4620/
Candy Rowe1 Contact Information and Tim Guilford2
(1) Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
(2) Department of Zoology, Oxford, UK
Abstract Multimodal warning displays combine visual signals with components produced in other sensory modalities, for instance, aposematically coloured insects often produce a pungent odour or harsh sound when they are attacked. Recent research has focussed upon a particular odour, pyrazine, which is commonly associated with warning coloration. Our experiments have shown that pyrazine elicits hidden unlearned biases against particular visual aspects of food in foraging domestic chicks. Here we asses the current state of our knowledge about these biases, reviewing our results using pyrazine and other odours, and also presenting new data showing that sound can produce similar effects. We will discuss potential psychological mechanisms by which these foraging biases are achieved in avian predators, and potential pathways for their evolution.
aposematism - hidden biases - multimodal warning signals - predation - pyrazine