Procedure and Materials
Participants were randomly assigned to one condition of a 2 (context: dating interview or intelligence interview) × 2 (color: red or blue t-shirt) between-participants design. They met a research assistant in a lab room for a study on “motivation,” and were told that they would be interviewed by another research assistant in a separate room “down the hallway.” Participants were told that they would be interviewed about “dating at Gettysburg College” (romance-relevant context) or about “your intelligence” (achievement-relevant context). They were told that there were several interviewers and that we had pictures of all of them so they could see who would be interviewing them later. Then, participants were shown an opposite-sex picture of the person (“Jack” or “Jackie”) who would (ostensibly) be interviewing them; see Figure 1). Each target person was rated as attractive in pilot work [33]. The pictures were 5.5″×4.5″ head and shoulder shots in which the individual was wearing either a red or a blue t-shirt. The pictures were centered on an 8.5″×11″ page and printed on Epson Enhanced Matte archival quality paper with an Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer. We selected red and blue colors that were equal in lightness and chroma using the CIELCh color model and a GretagMacBeth Eye-One Pro spectrophotometer. The parameters for the color red were LCh(51.1/57.7/27.8) and for the color blue were LCh(51.6/57.6/278.3).