Surprise!

News in Science reports:

Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn't much anybody can do about it, researchers say.

Their study, published in the journal Current Biology, is one of the first to show scientifically that there are gender-based colour preferences. . . .

In the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1000 pairs of coloured rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best, as quickly as possible.

Afterwards, [Professor Anya] Hurlbert and colleague Dr Yazhu Ling 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 says.

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 says.

So is it lilac or pink, Professor? There's a staggering difference between the two. What are you, a GUY?

Comments

[Highlyeccentric]

and how does that prove it's intrinsic, anyway? it proves it's common to adult men and women, that's all..

does anyone else remember the primary school classroom politics which dictated "which" colours boys and girls could pick for their favourites... things like that might have taught us which colours to prefer, as a gender...

[gail]

Good point. I wonder how they separate learned response from instinctive?

[gail]

They had to have considered it. If I have time, I'll try to find the original research paper and see how (and if) they made the determination.