By The Way...

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
8:27:00 AM EDT
Hearing If You Leave -- OMD


Science is finding out some weird things these days, like this: Women really do prefer pink, study finds:

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...

n the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1,000 pairs of colored 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 color spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum.

“When you add it together you get the colors they intrinsically like, you get bluish red, which is sort of lilac or pink,” she said.

Now the question is: why is there that preference? The speculation is that red is the color of ripe fruit (among other things) and women, who specialized in gathering while men specialized in hunting, learned to seek it out (color is not so important in hunting). I don't know if I buy that speculation, personally, but this is all very preliminary as it is. Still interesting, though.

I do know that currently my daughter's favorite colors are pink, purple... and black. I'm not sure how black comes into it. She does have a little goth thing going, but even so.


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This entry has 7 comments: (Add your own)

• #7 Comment from ordinarygoddess4 
  8/22/07 2:02 PM | Permalink

  There was a time when I was a little girl that pink was my favorite color.  It was later supplanted by yellow and finalized as blue by the time I hit my teens.  It has remained blue for over 30 years, mainly cobalt shades and darker.  And during that time I grew to hate pink, though now I like it fine.
• #6 Comment from johnmscalziEntry Author 
  8/22/07 10:09 AM | Permalink

  Actually, nancy, I think I did answer that question -- I just use the hue/saturation tool in Photoshop to draw back the greens, yellows and cyans. That leaves the red, blues and magentas alone.
• #5 Comment from nhd106 
  8/21/07 10:23 PM | Permalink

  You never answered my question on how you did that....can you?
  
  nancy
• #4 Comment from swmpgrly 
  8/21/07 4:14 PM | Permalink

  I do love pink...lol
• #3 Comment from monponsett 
  8/21/07 11:14 AM | Permalink

  I prefer green, as opposed to B&W stems.

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