Girls like pink, it’s official
Steve Connor

THE idea that little girls like everything in pink while little boys prefer blue appears to have a scientific basis, according to a study showing that a person’s colour preference depends largely on their sex. Scientists have found that women tend to prefer pink — or at least a redder shade — while men prefer blue, and that the gender difference may be down to genes rather than upbringing.

The study investigated the long-held — but until now largely unsupported — view that women and men have different colour preferences. It is the first to show that there is a scientific basis for the idea that girls are born with a particular affinity for pink colours.

The researchers, Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University, said that despite the evidence for differences between the sexes in terms of visual skills, there was no conclusive proof of sex differences in colour preference.

"This fact is perhaps surprising given the prevalence and longevity of the notion that little girls differ from boys in preferring pink," they say in the journal Current Biology.

Dr Hurlbert recruited 208 people aged between 20 and 26 for the study and subjected them to a battery of tests to determine their colour preferences. A substantial minority, 37, of the group were born and raised in China, which allowed the scientists to compare the preferences of people from two different cultures.

Each young man and woman had to choose as fast as they could their preferred colour from each of a series of paired, coloured rectangles shown on a computer screen. The universally preferred colour for both sexes was blue, but females also showed a distinct preference for reddish colours, Dr Hurlbert said.

"Although we expected to find sex differences, we were surprised at how robust they were, given the simplicity of the test," Dr Hurlbert said. "On top of the universal preference for blue, females have a preference for the red end of the red-green axis, and this shifts their colour preference slightly away from blue towards red, which tends to make pinks and lilacs the most preferred colours in comparison with others," she said.

When the two scientists compared the colour preferences of the white British participants with the men and women brought up in China, the same sex differences emerged, with Chinese females again showing a clear preference for pink.

Whatever is the underlying explanation for the differences in colour preferences between men and women, it seems to be biological rather than cultural, Dr Hurlbert said.

— By arrangement with The Independent