What Happens When You See Red?

A pair of studies I recently revisited explore the very human reactions of men and women to the color red when worn by the opposite sex. It turns out that red clothing increases one's desirability to the other gender. Specifically, women find men wearing red to be “higher in status, more likely to make money, and more likely to climb the social ladder.” Men, alas, are more primitive: we simply find women wearing red to be more attractive than if they are dressed in other colors. These reactions are important if we're giving a presentation, or simply trying to make a point in a meeting of our work team, because if our audience or colleagues sees us as higher in status or more attractive, they are more likely to credit what we say and remember it. We humans work like that. It's like a touch of celebrity status.

Source: Olasupo John/Pexels

An Unconscious Advantage

Apparently, put either gender in red and the lizard brains go to work when we watch them take center stage. What fascinated me about these studies was that the subjects were not aware of their biases toward red. In other words, the color of the clothing you wear as a speaker, or while leading a meeting, has a primarily subliminal effect on the audience, not a conscious one. No one consciously notices the effect of red.

That puts your clothing into the highly important category that includes most issues of good and bad hand gestures, the sound of your voice, and how you move in relationship to the audience: all actions you can take that affect how your audience reacts to you, but which they are not aware of.

Become Intentional

It’s time to become an intentional speaker in a variety of ways. If you don’t, the polyglot nature of our bodies will betray you as often as it propels you to victory. Virtually anyone who has ever spoken in public knows the experience of the little brain in our guts (yes, we have neurons there!) disabling us by sending messages of abject terror shooting up to our big brains, causing embarrassing physical symptoms that become impossible for us—and sometimes even the others in the room—to ignore: the flush on the face, the quiver in the voice, or the tremor in the hands.

An intentional speaker goes to work on the speech, not just by learning a text or memorizing the flow of some slides, but also by becoming aware of how she shows up in person in front of the audience, which includes her attire.

The intentional speaker starts a new, more sophisticated dialogue, not just between brain and body, but between our big brain, our unconscious and conscious brains, our little brain, and our body—with all the conscious and unconscious aspects of the self. The intentional speaker ensures that her gut is supporting her big brain and body, and the other way around. The intentional speaker gets all the systems working together to ensure that she’s operating at peak efficiency at those moments when you need to be at the top of your game.

And don’t forget the red.