What colour should I wear? How clothing colour affects women's judgement of other women's body attractiveness and body size

Nimreth Sidhu,Chloe Qualter,Emily Higgs,Kun Guo

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103338

Abstract

Research has indicated that female body perception and associated body-viewing gaze behaviour in women viewers can be influenced by a variety of internal and external factors (e.g., own body satisfaction, clothing style, and viewing angle). Although the clothing colour affects women's visual and aesthetic appearance rated by men or women wearer themselves, its impact on women judging other women's body attractiveness and body size is largely unclear. In this eye-tracking study we presented female body images of Caucasian and African avatars in a continuum of common dress sizes wearing different colours (black, grey, white, red, green and blue), and asked 31 young Caucasian women to rate the perceived body attractiveness and body size. Our analysis revealed that clothing colour black and red attracted the highest body attractiveness and slimmer body size ratings, whereas green and grey induced the lowest body attractiveness and overestimated body size judgements. Such colour-induced modulatory effect on body perception was further influenced by the avatar race (or skin tone; e.g., higher attractiveness ratings for colours white, blue and green in African than in Caucasian avatars), and was associated with the changes of body-viewing gaze allocation at the upper body and waist-hip regions (i.e. colour black and white attracting more viewing at the upper body and waist-hip regions, respectively). Taken together, it seems that the clothing colour and its contrast with skin tone play valuable roles in mediating women's body perception of other women.

Highlights

With their high perceptual saliency in our natural surroundings, human bodies tend to attract our visual attention and often lead to the conscious or unconscious assessment of body attractiveness and body size (Peelen & Downing, 2007)
Body attractiveness judgement: to explore to what extent body attractiveness judgements were affected by clothing colour, avatar race and dress size, a 6 × 2 × 6 ANOVA was conducted with attractiveness rating as the dependent variable
This study aimed to extend our previous research on internal and external factors surrounding female body perception in women, by examining the effect of the clothing colour on judging Caucasian and African avatars' body attractiveness and body size, and associated body-viewing gaze distribution

Summary

Introduction

With their high perceptual saliency in our natural surroundings, human bodies tend to attract our visual attention and often lead to the conscious or unconscious assessment of body attractiveness and body size (Peelen & Downing, 2007). Previous research has revealed a range of external and internal fac tors that affect young women's judgements of other women's body attractiveness and body size, and associated body-viewing gaze behav iour External factors are those visual cues contained in the viewed bodies, such as body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), body fat, model race, clothing style and size. Body size and body attractiveness assessment in young women involves both stereotypical pattern of concentrated gaze at the waist-hip and chest regions and individualised gaze comparison process This gaze behaviour is modified by various internal and external factors, and is possibly driven by the need for social comparison to establish and/or to enhance one's own attractiveness (Hahn & Perrett, 2014). It is plausible that these colour-associated changes in emotion and visual perception could subsequently affect human body perception, such as body attractiveness and size judgements

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