Read the research article added here and answer the question:1. Can we technically conclude that conception risk affects shirt-choice?Group of answer choicesA. Yes, because women were randomly selected and their conception risk was manipulatedB. Yes, because women were randomly assigned to conception risk status and their conception risk was manipulatedC. No, because women were not randomly assigned to conception risk status and their conception risk was not manipulated Research ReportWomen Are More Likely to Wear Redor Pink at Peak FertilityAlec T. Beall and Jessica L. TracyUniversity of British ColumbiaapsDATION FORPSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCESexual intercourse typically results in conception onlywithin the few days of a woman's cycle prior to and dur-ing ovulation (Wilcox, Weinberg, & Baird, 1995), makingit potentially adaptive for women to advertise their fertilewindow in an observable manner that attracts male atten-tion, as do females of closely related primate species(Domb & Pagel, 2001; see Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011;but also see Burley, 1979). However, scientists have notfound any clearly observable, objective behavioral dis-play associated with ovulation in humans. Building onevidence that women are motivated to enhance theirattractiveness during ovulation (Haselton, Mortezaie,Pillsworth, Bleske-Rechek, & Frederick, 2007), and thatmen perceive shades of red-when associated withwomen-as sexually attractive (Elliot & Niesta, 2008), wetested whether women preferentially display these colorsduring peak fertility.Psychological Science249) 1857-1841The Author(s) 2015Reprints and permissions:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions navDOI 10.1177/0956797613476045AbstractAlthough females of many species closely related to humans signal their fertile window in an observable manner,often involving red or pink coloration, no such display has been found for humans. Building on evidence that men aresexually attracted to women wearing or surrounded by red, we tested whether women show a behavioral tendencytoward wearing reddish clothing when at peak fertility. Across two samples (N=124), women at high conception riskwere more than 3 times more likely to wear a red or pink shirt than were women at low conception risk, and 77%of women who wore red or pink were found to be at high, rather than low, risk. Conception risk had no effect onthe prevalence of any other shirt color. Our results thus suggest that red and pink adornment in women is reliablyassociated with fertility and that female ovulation, long assumed to be hidden, is associated with a salient visual cue.Individuals across cultures associate red with love andpassion (Aslam, 2006). Studies using a range of methodsand populations have demonstrated that women's use ofred is linked to sex and romance (e.g., Elliot & Pazda,2012; Greenfield, 2005) and that men find women wear-ing or surrounded by red particularly attractive andpss.sagepub.comSSAGEKeywordsfertility, human mate selection, color perception, conception risk, ovulation, evolutionary psychology, socialcognition, physical appearanceReceived 5/4/12; Revision accepted 1/5/13sexually desirable (Elliot & Niesta, 2008). This last effecthas been demonstrated among members of a highly iso-lated, traditional, small-scale society where red carriescultural associations divergent from those found in theWest, suggesting that the link between red and sexualattraction may be universal (Elliot, Tracy, Pazda, & Beall,2013).Several possible explanations for men's attraction toredness on or surrounding women have been proffered(see Elliot & Niesta, 2008)-including, for example, red'sattention-grabbing perceptual properties, the fact thatreddish skin tone often indicates sexual arousal inwomen, and the finding that males of other species showa similar attraction (Bielert, Girolami, & Jowell, 1989),suggesting that these cognitions might have originallyemerged in a shared ancestor and have been retained inhumans. Regardless of the mechanism underlying thisCorresponding Author:Alec T. Beall, Department of Psychology, University of BritishColumbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4,CanadaE-mail: alec@psych.ubc.ca1838attraction, the well-documented presence of this ten-dency among men leads to an interesting predictionregarding women. Given women's brief fertile window, itmay be adaptive for them to dress in a way that increasestheir sexual attractiveness to men during this period.Women thus may self-adorn in red or pink during thistime as part of a broader drive to appear more sexuallyattractive at peak fertility (Durante, Li, & Haselton, 2008;Haselton & Gangestad, 2006). Alternatively, if the hor-mones associated with ovulation make women feelsexier during peak fertility (Haselton & Gangestad, 2006),they may be inclined to wear clothing with attention-grabbing properties (e.g., red-colored clothing) duringthis time, even in the absence of any desire to attractmen.Despite these possibilities, prior research has sug-gested that the advertisement of human female fertility islargely hidden, involving vocal, olfactory, and subtlevisual changes, but few overt behavioral displays (Bryant& Haselton, 2008; Miller & Maner, 2011). For example,although two studies have suggested that women's facesare judged as more attractive during peak fertility, thewomen in these studies posed neutral expressions andremoved all cosmetics prior to being photographed,making it unlikely that their increased attractiveness wasdue to any objectively measureable behavioral display(Puts et al., 2013; Roberts et al., 2004).Other studies have documented changes in women'smate-seeking desires and behavioral tendencies duringpeak fertility: a self-reported increased desire to have sexwith men (e.g., Haselton & Gangestad, 2006), an increasedattraction to physical markers of health and masculinity(Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2000), an increased desire towear revealing clothing (Durante et al., 2008), and a ten-dency to wear clothing that leads women to be judged astrying to look more attractive (Haselton et al., 2007). Inaddition, one study found that women at peak fertilitywore more revealing clothing, but this effect emergedonly among partnered women (whose partners wereabsent) attending Austrian discotheques, where, presum-ably, dressing provocatively does not violate social norms(Grammer, Renninger, & Fischer, 2004). These caveats areimportant because, despite several attempts, prior studieshave thus far failed to document a generalized, objec-tively observable change in women's everyday behavioror dress that is linked to ovulation.Furthermore, although Haselton, Mortezaie, Pillsworth,Bleske-Rechek, and Frederick (2007) found that part-nered women were rated as dressing more fashionably atpeak fertility, there was no difference in ratings of sexi-ness (and, again, the effect on fashionableness wasrestricted to partnered women). Similarly, althoughDurante and colleagues (2008; Durante, Griskevicius,Hill, Perilloux, & Li, 2011) found that women at peakfertility reported a desire to purchase and wear sexierBeall, Tracyclothing when imagining attending a social gathering atwhich they might meet men, no difference emerged inthe observed sexiness of the clothing the women actuallywore. Durante and colleagues (2008) argued that experi-mental studies may fail to document an ovulation-linkedchange in women's dress because dressing in provoca-tive clothing is often not socially acceptable, particularlyfor women participating in research on a university cam-pus. As a result, it remains unclear whether there is anysalient, observable behavioral display reliably associatedwith female ovulation.Building on the evidence reviewed above suggestingthat women may seek to increase their attractiveness byself-adorning in reddish colors, and should be particu-larly motivated to do so during peak fertility, we testedwhether women are more likely to wear red- or pink-colored clothing during this period, compared with otherphases of their menstrual cycle. Support for this predic-tion would provide the first evidence for a distinct andvisually obvious behavioral display linked to femaleovulation.MethodParticipantsSample A. A total of 100 American women (aged 18-47years, Mdn = 26) recruited through Amazon's MechanicalTurk (see Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011) partici-pated in return for monetary compensation.Sample B. A total of 24 female undergraduates at theUniversity of British Columbia (aged 17-31 years, Mdn =19) participated in exchange for course credit.ProcedureTwo samples of regularly ovulating female participantscompleted measures online. Participants responded tothe question, "What color is the shirt you are currentlywearing? (If your shirt is multicolored, please select thecolor which is most prevalent)." Response options were"black," "blue," "gray," "green," "pink," "red," "white," "yel-low," and "other." Participants also responded to thequestion, "How many days has it been since the onset ofyour last period of menses? Responses were used todivide women into a high-conception-risk group (Days6-14; Sample A: n = 51; Sample B: n = 10) and a low-conception-risk group (Days 0-5 and 15-28; Sample An = 49, Sample B: n = 14) on the basis of a standard28-day model of the menstrual cycle (Penton-Voak &Perrett, 2000). We excluded women whose first day ofmenses had occurred more than 28 days previously toavoid including women experiencing atypical cycles(Little, Jones, & DeBruine, 2008).² FemaleFertility CueTo address concerns regarding the assessment ofmenstrual history via self-report (Bean, Leeper, Wallace,Sherman, & Jagger, 1979; but see Baker, Denning, Kostin,& Schwartz, 1998), we also asked participants, "Withinhow many days are you 100% confident in your aboveestimate?" Participants responded using a scale from 1 to7 with the following anchors: 1 = 0 days (I'm 100% con-fident), 2= 1 day, 3= 2 days, 4 = 3 days, 5= 4 days, 6 =5 days, and 7 More than 5 days (I'm not very confi-dent). We excluded all participants who responded with"7" (n=9) and all for whom we could not determineconception-risk-category membership with 100% cer-tainty (n = 47). Specifically, we excluded, for example,any participant who indicated that her last menses hadbegun 12 days previously but was 100% confident of thatestimate within 3 days. In that case, we would assumethat her last period had begun within the past 9 to 15days and, thus, she could not be included in either thehigh-conception-risk group (Days 6-14) or the low-conception-risk group (Days 0-5 and 15-28). In con-trast, any participant who indicated that her last menseshad begun 10 days previously and was 100% confidentwithin 3 days would be included because we couldassume that her period had begun within the past 7 to 13days, which would place her firmly within the high-conception-risk group (Days 6-14).ResultsWomen were classified as wearing a red or pink shirt(Sample A, n = 17; Sample B, n = 5) or a different-coloredshirt (Sample A, n = 83; Sample B, n = 19). Women athigh conception risk were substantially more likely to bewearing a red or pink shirt compared with women at lowconception risk-Sample A: 26% vs. 8%, x²(1, N= 100) =5.32, p= .02, odds ratio= 3.85; Sample B: 40 % vs. 7%,x(1, N=24)= 3.82, p= .051, odds ratio = 8.67. Examiningthe likelihood that a woman's shirt-color choice predictedovulation, we found that 76% of women in Sample A and80% of women in Sample B who were wearing red orpink were at peak fertility, which suggests that reddish-colored clothing is a strong indicator of ovulation (seeFig. 1 for results). In contrast, only 46% of women inSample A and 32% of women in Sample B who werewearing shirts of any other color were at high conceptionrisk. Indeed, conception risk had no effect on the preva-lence of any other shirt color in either sample (for addi-tional details, see the Supplemental Material availableonline).DiscussionAcross two samples of women, those at high conceptionrisk were 3.5 times more likely to be wearing red or pinkWomen at High Conception Risk100%90%80%70%60%50%40%40%15304630%20%10%0%Red- or Pink-Colored ShirtDifferent-Colored ShirtCommunity1839UndergraduateSampleFig. 1. Percentage of women at high conception risk in the two sam-ples as a function of shirt color. Error bars indicate standard errors ofthe mean.than were those at low risk, and those who wore red orpink were more than 3 times as likely to be at high con-ception risk than at low conception risk. These findingssupport the prediction that displays of red and pink are areliable fertility cue in women and are the first to suggesta visually salient, publicly observable, objective behaviorthat is associated with female ovulation.The underlying mechanism accounting for the presentfindings is, as of yet, unknown, but it may be bestexplained as a by-product of other psychological andmotivational changes that occur with ovulation. Pastresearch has suggested that women desire to dress sexierduring ovulation; however, studies have largely failed todemonstrate any consistent behavioral change in the sex-iness of women's dress across periods of conception risk(Durante et al., 2008; Grammer et al., 2004; Haselton &Gangestad, 2006; Haselton et al., 2007). The currentinvestigation offers a possible explanation for this dis-crepancy: Although women at peak fertility may largelyrefrain from dressing more provocatively out of social-normative concerns (Durante et al., 2008), they maynonetheless seek to increase their apparent sexiness byself-adorning in the colors that are known to increasetheir attractiveness to men and that, at least in NorthAmerican contexts, are not associated with any socialstigma. Future studies are needed to test whether thepresent results were due to an increased desire amongovulating women to dress in a more sexually attractivemanner. It is noteworthy, in this context, that prior stud-ies examining male sexual interest have found that men'sattraction to women wearing red holds when controllingfor the sexiness of the women's clothing (as well as otherrelevant variables; Elliot & Niesta, 2008), raising the1840possibility that the present findings also may have beendue to something about redness that cannot be attributedentirely to ovulating women's desire to dress sexier.Regardless of this issue, the present findings are likelyto be linked, in some manner, to men's tendency to findred and pink attractive. An important question, then, iswhy are men, cross-culturally, so attracted to thesecolors? Several researchers have suggested that this pro-clivity is the result of an adaptation originating in our non-human primate ancestors, due to the fact that in someprimate species (e.g., chimpanzees), females' genitalsacquire an extreme red or pink coloration during ovula-tion (i.e., estrous swellings) from increased vascularization(Elliot & Niesta, 2008; Gerald, 2003). The visibility of theseswellings would make it adaptive for males of these spe-cies to find redness in females attractive, and it is possiblethat a cognitive mechanism associating red with attractive-ness thus emerged in a shared nonhuman ancestor andwas retained in humans. This account presupposes thatestrous swellings were present in at least some ancestorshared between humans and these other primates; it isthus challenged by evidence that exaggerated swellingsemerged only after the chimpanzee genus diverged fromthe line that led to modern humans (Pagel & Meade, 2006).However, other researchers have suggested that humanancestors may have displayed some form of considerablysubtler visual signs of estrus, including a slight reddeningof the anogenital area (Sillen-Tullberg & Moller, 1993), andthat humans' erect posture concealed this coloration suchthat, eventually, female fertility signaling through red col-oration became maladaptive because of the energyexpended creating such displays (see Pawlowski, 1999).Given these competing accounts, this is an issue thatwould benefit from future investigations.Another possibility is that red came to be associatedwith sexuality because of its impact on sensory systemsunrelated to mating (Kirkpatrick & Ryan, 1991). Ancestralforaging practices made spotting ripened fruit (indicatedthrough redness) paramount to survival (Osorio &Vorobyev, 1996), so the human perceptual system mighthave become finely attuned to this color, and men's ten-dency to find it attractive could be a by-product of red'sbroader attention-grabbing properties. Future research isneeded to examine whether the present effects were dueto an increased desire among women to attract visualattention during the period when they feel sexier, even inthe absence of any desire to attract men (and, conversely,whether the effects were due to women at low fertilityfeeling less sexy and therefore refraining from wearingsuch clothing).One methodological limitation of the present researchwas our reliance on self-report rather than hormonalmeasures to assess conception risk. Although con-cerns have been raised regarding the reliability of theBeall, Tracyassessment method we used (Bean et al., 1979; but seeBaker et al., 1998), our invocation of a new method toassess women's confidence in their self-reported mensesonset may be of use in future research. By taking intoaccount women's uncertainty on this issue, this methodameliorates some concerns regarding the use of self-reported estimates. Furthermore, if errors were made inour categorization of women into high- and low-concep-tion-risk groups, these errors would reduce our power tofind effects, making the reported effects conservativeestimates of actual effect sizes. Nonetheless, future stud-ies should seek to replicate and extend our findingsusing hormonal assessment techniques.Regardless of these issues, which highlight importantdirections for future research, the present results are thefirst to indicate that female ovulation, long assumed to behidden, is in fact associated with a distinct, objectivelyobservable behavioral display.Author ContributionsBoth authors contributed to the study design. Data collection,analyses, and interpretations were performed by A. T. Beallunder the supervision of J. L Tracy. Both authors contributedto the composition of the manuscript, with A. T. Beall compos-ing initial drafts. Both authors approved the final version of themanuscript for submission.Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest withrespect to their authorship or the publication of this article.Supplemental MaterialAdditional supporting information may be found at http://psssagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-dataNotes1. We requested that women not participate if they were morethan 40 years old, users of hormonal birth control, cigarettesmokers, pregnant, or not experiencing regular menstrualcycles (see Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011). We also requestedthat women not participate if they were within 5 days of theonset of menses, to minimize the inclusion of women for whomeffects might be attributable to menstrual or premenstrual.symptoms (see Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011). However, 22%of participants in Sample A and 38% of participants in SampleB reported being within this 10-day window and were includedin all analyses (all reported results across the two samplesheld when these women were excluded). It is noteworthy thatthese recruitment efforts and exclusion criteria resulted in alarge proportion of women in the high-conception-risk cate-gory (Sample A: 51%; Sample B: 42%).2. Results held, collapsing across the two samples, when thesewomen (n=9) were included in analyses.3. Results held, collapsing across the two samples, when thesewomen (n=47) were included in analyses.

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