Biological components of sex differences in color preference

A robust, cross-cultural sex difference in color preference is reported, revealed by a rapid paired-comparison task, which, it is suggested, may be linked to the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy.

Abstract

The long history of color preference studies has been described as "bewildering, confused and contradictory" [1McManus I.C. Jones A.L. Cottrell J. The aesthetics of colour.Perception. 1981; 10: 651-666Crossref Scopus (106) Google Scholar]. Although recent studies [1McManus I.C. Jones A.L. Cottrell J. The aesthetics of colour.Perception. 1981; 10: 651-666Crossref Scopus (106) Google Scholar, 2Granger G.W. Objectivity of colour preference.Nature. 1952; 170: 778-780Crossref PubMed Scopus (30) Google Scholar, 3Ou L.C. Luo M.R. Woodcock A. Wright A. A study of colour emotion and colour preference. Part III: Colour preference modeling.Color Res. Appl. 2004; 29: 381-389Crossref Scopus (156) Google Scholar] tend to agree on a universal preference for 'blue', the variety and lack of control in measurement methods have made it difficult to extract a systematic, quantitative description of preference. Furthermore, despite abundant evidence for sex differences in other visual domains, and specifically in other tasks of color perception [4Greene K. Gynther M. Blue versus periwinkle: color identification and gender.Percep. Mot. Skills. 1995; 80: 27-32Crossref PubMed Scopus (22) Google Scholar, 5Bimler D. Kirkland J. Jameson K.A. Quantifying variations in personal color spaces: Are there sex differences in color vision?.Color Res. Appl. 2004; 29: 128-134Crossref Scopus (68) Google Scholar], there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of sex differences in color preference. This fact is perhaps surprising, given the prevalence and longevity of the notion that little girls differ from boys in preferring 'pink' [6Alexander G.M. An evolutionary perspective of sex-typed toy preferences: pink, blue, and the brain.Arch. Sex. Behav. 2003; 32: 7-17Crossref PubMed Scopus (98) Google Scholar]. Here we report a robust, cross-cultural sex difference in color preference, revealed by a rapid paired-comparison task. Individual color preference patterns are summarized by weights on the two fundamental neural dimensions that underlie color coding in the human visual system. We find a consistent sex difference in these weights, which, we suggest, may be linked to the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy.