Red is everywhere – celebrities walk the red carpet, politicians wear red ties, and lots of sports teams wear it. There have even been studies showing that the same person is perceived as being more attractive when wearing red.
The question is, why? What’s the biological explanation for this?
In: Biology
In European history, Purple is the *actual* color of power. Purple was the most difficult and expensive dye to make, and it was consistently the color of royalty.
However, as far back as ancient Greece, a “crimson carpet” was an indicator of godliness. I can’t find any sources that explain why *red* specifically. A reasonable theory would be that carpets were typically made of furs in antiquity, and there is no game animal with red fur from the Mediterranean or Middle East. That means red is “otherworldly” (and expensive to create) in clothing or carpets.
We generally find red things to be *striking* because they stand out. Our natural world doesn’t have a lot of solid red in it. Neither does our current world, for that matter. This means *solid red* stands out as a color and can feel otherworldly.
Some folks have also theorized that we are attracted to red because it is the color of ripe fruit, ovulating sexual organs in pre-human primates, and/or blood.
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