Women really do prefer pink, researchers say
Aug. 20, 2007 —
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.
Recent studies have suggested there is a universal preference for "blue," and there has not been much previous evidence to support the idea of sex differences when picking colours, said Anya Hurlbert, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University who led the study.
In the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1,000 pairs of coloured rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best as quickly as possible.
Afterwards, Hurlbert and colleagues plotted the results along the colour spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum.
"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.
Hurlbert believes women's preference for pink may have evolved on top of a natural, universal preference for blue.
"When you add it together you get the colours they intrinsically like, you get bluish red, which is sort of lilac or pink," she said.
For men, thinking about colours was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it, Hurlbert said.
As for Eve, Hurlbert added, maybe there was a different reason she picked that apple.
"Red was the colour of a good ripe fruit," Hurlbert said.
27 Kommentare:
I would still be hard-pressed to agree to the scientific basis of why women tend to favor the color pink and its peripheral spectrum. Not at this age and day when most societies had been primed to think that pink or the softer shade of red more often has feminine adherence.
That the color of the ripe fruit is red, might just be coincidental. And besides, the Bible didn't explicitly say it was The Apple that Eve picked; it only said the Fruit of the Good and Evil. For all we know, the fruit was a banana or santol or tiesa, whereby the colors of its ripe are yellow.
There are also ripe green apples. LOL
if you want to determine if there's a genetic predisposition towards a certain color, you'll have to ask someone who wasn't conditioned to like it in the first place. in almost every instance, baby girls are made to wear pink, given pink toys and pink rooms while boys are given blue outfits, rooms, and everything else. so unless you can ask a neonate what color he/she prefers, i will not even give this study any degree of credibility.
ovid loves blue and earth colors and hates pink. this confirms it. another point for nature (in this nature versus nurture debate).
On a similar topic, I once read Rina Jimenez David as she told her story while her son was still a toddler that they let him play with cooking untensils, as a form of experiment. "Though risky", since cooking utensils stuff were rather played by girls, the son grew up and fit into the convention of "straight" male with choices leaning towards "male convention". From what she wrote, I understood that there is no specific convention that should draw male or female preferences.
Oh, many German parents I know let their sons play dolls. But of course they live in a liberal European context where being gay is no longer an issue.
sure, conditioning plays a very big role in determining many of our likes and dislikes. But the question is, how did this predisposition towards something -the conditioning, if you will- developed? The article I blogged seems to provide an answer to that.
hands up, I agree with you on that...
there's a simpler way to determine the influence of "nature" and "environment."
if your child looks like you or your wife, that's nature. if she/he looks like your neighbor, its environment. lol!
ULOL!
BWAHAHAHAH!
this reminds me to a long-standing joke between me and my wife that Anna is not my child. But see her picture above, and there's no iota of doubt. Hahaha...
sorry, but i don't think they proved anything of that sort. it's an interesting article though, but i wouldn't bet my neck on their results. i see your point though. why do people think pink is a feminine color and blue masculine? maybe we can trace it back to flowers instead of fruits. =) but then again, why blue for boys? because men looked at the sky to find food? hahahahahaha!
I don't believe in the fruit theory. As someone said: what about bananas and mangos and grapes and whatnot? And nuts and seeds and plants etc. that must have been as least as important to gatherers as fruit.
Red is connected to the root chakra which plays a part in sexuality and reproduction; blue to the throat chakra that has to do with communication (among other things). I wonder whether we're attracted to colours that represent our forte or, on the contrary, to the ones we "lack".
My favourite colour is green or greenish blue, btw.
This is interesting. I love blue. Hmmm...
Yeah.... i used to love pink and the color is probably associated with sweetness and purity. But my color taste has since changed along the years and now, I think I prefer darker colors and anything that's gold. (Lol!!)
You have lots of nice blog articles but I dont hv time to read them all. I'lll stop by again...!!!
Thanks for passing by Kylie. And, yes, sooo many good blogs to read, and we only have very little time :-(
indeed, good blogs are sprouting everywhere!
Hi, Dave! Am glad to 'see' you again. It's so depressing outside- gray, rainy, and cold- I'm hooked here again in Multiply.
is it snowtime? what's the temperature?
no more snow. There was the other week but the temperature - now hovering bet 6-11 °C- crazily climbed again up even the snows in higher regions are now also melting.
this erratic temperature is what makes me crazy here. My skin can tolerate -0 coldness but it should be stable- not going up and down.
ah, global warming, probably.
I'm sure it's it. How's the impact of Tonio in the Philippines?
its impact is in the southern part. not her in manila. but its no longer big deal here . hahaha!
Oh, don't laugh, my friend. My family lives in the South :-(
i mean, typhoons here are no longer big deal. they come and go. year in and year out. sometimes they do kill but they are almost predictable like a broken record.
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