Studies have shown that this may be because red triggers a primal instinct that associates it with sex. And men were found to want to date women when they wore scarlet or crimson, and were more willing to spend more money on them as a result.
The study, conducted by the University of Rochester in New York, was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The study began by showing the men a picture of a supposedly average-looking young woman wearing a variety of colors, including red, white, gray, and green.
More than 100 men, most of them men in the University of Rochester department, were shown the photos and then asked to rate how pretty the woman was, how much they wanted to kiss them, how much they wanted to have sex with them, and so on. It turned out that even though it was the same person, the men found the one in red more attractive.
Another batch of photos showed a woman, wearing a different color shirt, and again the red was noticeable. Men were also willing to spend twice as much money on a woman in red as they were on a woman in blue.
Even with these results, men insisted that the color of their clothes did not influence their choices, suggesting that men are simply not self-conscious about the appeal of red.
The study also found that men were more attractive to women in red, too. Elliott said it may be a very deep biological predisposition to influence the preference for red, a legacy of evolution.