A savvy commercial photographer once shared the secret of his success. "It's simple," he confided, "I always try include something red in every photograph."

Red. It's the color of sunsets, the color of passion, and, in China, the color of good luck. Red is the badge of courage, the color of royalty, of power, and of sex. Apparently red is more "primary" than the other two in its category, yellow and blue.

Here's something new about red: Women find men in red to be more attractive, more powerful and more sexually desirable, according to the results of a study published in this month's Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In the study, women were asked to rate the status and sexual desirability of men pictured wearing different colored clothing. They rated the men wearing red as being higher status and more likely to earn a better living, as well as more appealing.

Even when the comparison was made between pictures of men merely surrounded by a red matte with those of men surrounded by a white matte, the women rated the men surrounded by red to be more pleasant and more attractive. The difference was small; just one point on a 9-point scale, but it was statistically significant. Remarkably, the appeal of red held true for women in the U.S. and England, as well as in Germany and China.