Can Science Explain Why Redheads Don’t Win Oscars?

Julianne Moore was nominated this year for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Still Alice, and Emma Stone got a nod for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Birdman. But will they fall victim to “red hair bias”? (Photos: Getty Images)

Seeing red? During awards season this year, we really have been.

Finally culminating in this morning’s Oscar nominations, the race was overpopulated by ginger-haired women vying for acting awards. Yet perpetual nominees Julianne Moore, Amy Adams and Jessica Chastain, along with acclaimed actress and awards’ season newcomer Emma Stone, are always the bridesmaids and never the bride at Hollywood’s big dance.

Because redheads don’t win Oscars.

Redhead Jessica Chastain and Amy Adams were both overlooked by the Academy this year — despite the fact that Adams just won Best Actress at the golden Globe Awards for her role in “Big Eyes.” (Photo: Getty Images)

Although it’s frivolous way to assess leading ladies, there does seem to be a bias against red-haired talent.

Only a few ginger actresses have managed take home a trophy on Oscar night: Ginger Rogers for 1940’s Kitty Foyle, Greer Garson for 1942’s Mrs. Miniver, Shirley MacLaine for Terms of Endearment (after five prior nods) and Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking (again, after five nods). Even sometimes-redhead Nicole Kidman won for 2002’s The Hours, she’s been better-known as a blonde actress for years now.

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It’s not that gingers don’t get recognition. Sometimes they do. Including 2015’s nomination, these four redheaded actresses have now garnered 13 Oscar tallies — although contenders Chastain and Adams did just miss out on key redhead nods this year, despite Adams’ Globe win for Big Eyes — but can’t seem to pull top honors. Only Emma Stone is a first-time nominee, although she’s earned recognition for other awards like a Golden Globe nod for Easy A in 2010. The rest have seen their names on the Oscar ballot six, five and three times and left the ceremony empty-handed.

Perhaps they’re not drawing enough admirers to score gold? The Oscar race isn’t the only place we see bias against redheads.

A 2006 study published in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, set out to evaluate top other beings of high status —  CEOs in the UK — based on hair color. Interestingly, the researchers determined redheads were overrepresented in their position, sort of like Oscar this year.

Researchers seemed to think this reinforced the stereotype that men and women with red hair are smart enough to obtain their position, and emotionally distant enough to keep it — or to put it more simply, “competent, but cold.”

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This might also explain the field of actresses with red hair right now, with tons of nominations for Oscar but zero wins. Are they competent enough to perform well and get a nod from the Academy, but not likable to win?” Perhaps science is playing out amongst our perpetual nominees.

Outside the job field, women with red hair may also have it tougher in their dating lives — a social repellent of sorts, according to certain research.

In a 2012 study led by French researcher Nicolas Guéguen, for instance, the scientists seated one of four women in a bar on 16 different nights over the course of four weeks. Each woman wore a different color wig each of the four times they went out: one blonde, one brunette, one black and one red.

Over the course of those 16 total hours, 127 men approached the blonde-haired woman, 84 men walked up to the brunette, 82 approached the black-haired bar-goer — but just 29 men talked to the red-haired woman.

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Why the discrepancy? University of Westminster psychologists Viren Swami and Seishin Barrett looked into this exact question when they asked men about their perceptions of women with different hair colors in a 2011 study. While blondes were viewed as needy and unthreatening, and brunettes were seen as intelligent but egotistical, redheads were viewed in an more unflattering light: loud, tempestuous and sexually promiscuous.

Sometimes, perception is all about associations, says John Marshall Townsend, Ph.D, a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, who studies the science of human attraction and behavior. “Red hair is supposed to be associated with fiery temper,” he tells Yahoo Health. “Some of it is ethnicity, too. When we think of red hair, we think of the Irish, who are supposed to drink a lot, be belligerent — it’s a stereotype.” Often, though, we unconsciously buy into those.

Evolutionary psychology might have something to say about why redheads may be chosen less in nightclubs or bars (and perhaps for Oscars), too. According to Townsend, humans always look for signs of health and vitality as hallmarks of a person’s allure. Men in particular are looking for these signs in women, things like pouty lips, curves, wide-set eyes… and clear skin.

Townsend explains that, from an evolutionary perspective, we’re always trying to determine the healthiest partner who will produce the healthiest offspring. “It’s not that men, or people, know that they’re doing this, it’s more or less ingrained,” he says. “It’s also why women get tans or wear make-up. They’re enhancing signs of youth. They’re evening out variations in skin tone to appear ‘better’ — which is really healthier.”

Now, redheads are prone to freckling. “The thing about redheads is that they don’t have much melanin,” says Townsend. “The old Irish stereotype is that they’re either freckled or they’re sunburned.”

And since they can’t get a tan naturally, and may characteristically get blotchy skin or freckled skin instead, this might leave them at a scientific disadvantage. “It’s all about associations,” Townsend says. “It’s not that red hair or freckles are associated with disease, per se, but freckles and blemishes could be perceived as a sign of disease at a glance.”

According to Alexander Todorov, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, a person makes some decisions based on characteristics they don’t even individualize and understand. Sometimes, we make snap judgments based on generations of evolution and innate instinct — even if we wish we didn’t.

“We generally describe face perception as holistic,” Todorov says. “That is, many features are considered simultaneously and people are often unaware of it. This effect is confirmed by studies suggesting that people make all sorts of social judgments of faces after presentation as brief as 40 milliseconds.”

So, if redheaded bias is happening, it’s so quick that you’d probably never know without a whole lot of conscious awareness. However, maybe we’re also becoming more conscious of the awesome, red-haired leading ladies in showbiz — and undoing a little bit of that evolutionary bias. Emma Stone, for example, is a chronic recipient of fan-favorite awards and distinctions, landing People’s Choice ‘Favorite Female Actress’ nominations four years running.

Perhaps we’re finally evolving beyond the stereotype and unfounded perceptions about our ginger gals (and guys).

And we love the gorgeous, talented crop in this year’s Oscar field. Even Todorov agrees. “I personally like red hair!” he says. “And the actresses mentioned this year are all amazing.”

May this season (or next) finally be Oscar’s Year of the Redhead — with many more to come hereafter.

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