The Effect Of Female Clothing Styles On Perception Of Sexual Intent

Sexual intent refers to one person’s subjective interest in pursing some type of sexual activities and perceptions of sexual intent is as the assessment of individual’s interest in pursing sexual activities. This research which included three studies explored how the change of female clothing styles influenced individual’s perception of sexual intent. Four types of female clothing styles were used for this research:red revealing clothing; red conservative clothing; non-red revealing clothing, non-red conservative clothing. According to Error Management Theory, male, compared to female, has the inclination to perceive a greater degree of female sexual intent from an evolutionary perspective. Therefore, the goal of the present research included investigating gender differences in perception of female sexual intent.The first study was an explicit experiment, in which participants viewed a photo of a female with different clothing styles and rated the intensity of her sexual intent on7-point scales ranging from1(not at all) to7(extremely strong). The second and third study adopted a standard IAT paradigm, and used the same material as the first study. The research results are as follows:1. Combining the results from the first study and the second study, the outcomes revealed that female revealing clothing style significant increased estimates of her sexual intent.2. Basing the experimental data from the second study and the third study, the results showed that compared to women, men were likely to associate female red-clothing styles with sex automatically. The effect of female red-clothing styles for women was more subtle, as women were likely to associate female red-clothing styles with sex on the condition of female revealing clothing styles.3. Gender differences in perception of female sexual intent were found in implicit level, not in explicit level. Female revealing clothing styles also did not generate gender differences in perception of female sexual intent. Only when the color of female clothing styles changed, this phenomenon was found.