By Blond women are more likely to get asked out than those with black, brown or red hair, according to new research. Psychological experiments found that red hair was generally associated with less attractiveness in both men and women, while blond women and dark-haired men fared best.
If you're blond, you're more likely to get a date at a bar, but less likely to be a CEO
Research at the Université de Bretagne-Sun in France investigated the response to men and women in a nightclub, wearing different coloured wigs. The findings were reported in the journal Psychological Studies.
Women wearing the blond wigs were found to be approached more often than those in any other hair colour. This backs up previous research that suggested blond waitresses receive more tips and blond door-to-door saleswomen more money.
One part of the research counted the number of approaches made to a woman as she sat in a nightclub for one hour. This was repeated on different nights using different coloured wigs over a four-week period. During the hour time frame, an average 137 men approached the woman wearing a blond wig, 84 the brown, 82 the black and 29 the red.
The consensus shown towards blonds suggests that rather than personal preference of hair colour, men are actually likely to conform to a standard pattern. Women are generally perceived to be less interested in physical appearance so the next part of the study investigated how male hair colour was judged by them.
Male subjects wearing different coloured wigs were sent into the nightclub to ask for dances. The blond was accepted by 27.5 per cent of the women, the brown 30 per cent, the black 35 per cent and the red just 13.8 per cent.
The inbuilt appeal or prejudice towards a particular hair colour could have a farther reaching impact than just getting picked up (or not) in a nightclub. Another study found that blonds were underrepresented in boardrooms of the top 500 FTSE companies in the UK and its lead author Margaret Takeda and team have suggested there could be a case for non-discrimination against hair colour in professional environments, in the way we already have laws referring to skin colour.
So it seems gentlemen really do prefer blonds. (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)
