Posted on 08/21/2007 11:32:12 AM PDT by Brujo
Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn't much anybody can do about it, researchers said on Monday in one of the first studies to show scientifically that there are gender-based color preferences.
Researchers said these differences may have a basis in evolution in which females developed a preference for reddish colors associated with riper fruit and healthier faces.
...
"We speculate that this sex difference arose from sex-specific functional specialization in the evolutionary division of labor," she wrote in Current Biology. "There are biological reasons for liking reddish things."
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"Women have a very clear pattern. It's low in the yellow and green regions and rises to a peak in the purplish to reddish region," she said.
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For men, thinking about colors was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it, Hurlbert said.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
LOL!!!!!
I had to think about that.
I was young...so were they.
I'm pretty sure I can identify red, blue, green, yellow, brown, black, and white without too much help.
“Complicated” colors (like “orange”) get complicated names (like “reddish-yellow” or “yellowish-red” or something like that).
No. I actually disagree with her interpretation of the data. But I don't think this is junk science. She has a legitimate research question and I see nothing wrong with her method of collecting data.
It doesn’t explain why men prefer blue.
Good point. I would be very surprised if that is not covered in the full research paper. You know how thorough reporters are. ;-)
I hate pink anything.
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thanks, bfl
Joe Arpaio (Maricopa County, AZ hates pink too. That is why all the prisoners have to wear pink underwear.
I agree. There is a man I’m conservative pals with (I used to sit with him in a cubicle) who for years has had the same purple shirt - light-colored but bright. It was eye-catching the 1st time I saw it (and it’s been MANY times since LOL - guess he doesn’t wear them out!). I specfically told him how much I like it (I like to compliment people when they really deserve it). I think it’s really important to support men over such items because other men may make them feel weird. I don’t know why 90% of men have such hang-ups about something as silly as color.
I read an article about this same thing in our local EXAMINER last night. I had the same gripes about this article as you, but now I know why.
It was quite a different spin.
There’s no explanation because there is NO preference for blue by men, supposedly. No preference for any color. The EXAMINER article said people were tested on the green-yellow and blue-red (I think - definitely among those 4 colors) scales. The men didn’t show any discernible preference. Apparently, women showed a preference for some reds on the 1 scale, but no preference on the other.
The problem with THIS article is it gives a misleading title - implying they found blue is preferred. It’s not.
Supposedly, she tested mainly “Britons”, but also “some Chinese” - but the article I read did not enumerate them. There were only about 200 subjects in the actual test, too.
See my post. There are other articles that write it up better than this poor article.
You and me both!
I have to say I am amused that a serious researcher would make the jump to a biological basis rather than cultural after testing only two cultures. I am also curious about the background of the “recent Chinese immigrants”. If there were from Hong Kong, it would be difficult to pretend that they were independent of British cultural influences, ignoring for the moment that it seems a stretch to claim that “white Britons” all have identical cultural backgrounds anyway.
Then again, questions such as these should be addressed in the formal paper, which I located (finally) here. Unfortunately, I am too cheap to pay for it. ;-) I guess I will just have to wait for the movie version to come out on cable ...
Did you ever see “Mr Blandings builds his Dream House” with Myrna Loy and Cary Grant?
The scene I’m thinking of is when Myrna Loy picks the house paint colors.
Ummmmmmmmmmm, wasn’t that filmed in black and white?
LOL. Yup.
Muriel Blandings: I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don’t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green.
Now, the dining room. I’d like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. I tell you, Mr. PeDelford, if you’ll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong!
Now, this is the paper we’re going to use in the hall. It’s flowered, but I don’t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There’s some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear?
Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room - in here - I want you to match this thread, and don’t lose it. It’s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan. Oh, excuse me...
Mr. PeDelford: You got that Charlie?
Charlie, Painter: Red, green, blue, yellow, white.
Mr. PeDelford: Check.
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