{"id":22900,"date":"2015-11-20T10:26:08","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T15:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=22900"},"modified":"2015-11-20T15:08:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T20:08:15","slug":"what-explains-differences-in-color-preference-by-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/11\/20\/what-explains-differences-in-color-preference-by-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"What explains differences in color preference by sex?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

A study<\/a> published in 2001, to which I was alerted by Family Inequality<\/a>, asked undergraduate college students their favorite color and presented the results by sex.\u00a0 Men’s favorites are on the left, women’s on the right:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The article is a great example of the difference between research findings <\/em>and the interpretation <\/em>of those findings. \u00a0For example, this is how I would interpret it:<\/p>\n

Today in the US, but not elsewhere and not always, blue is gendered male and pink gendered female.\u00a0 We might expect, then, that men would internalize a preference for blue and women a preference for pink.\u00a0 We live, however, in an androcentric society that values masculinity over femininity.\u00a0 This rewards the embracing of masculinity by both men and women (making it essentially compulsory for men) and stigmatizes the embracing of femininity (especially for men).<\/p>\n

We might expect, then, that men would comfortably embrace a love of blue (blue = masculinity = good), while many women will have a troubled relationship to pink (pink = femininity = devalued, but encouraged for women) and gravitate to blue and all of the good, masculine meaning it offers.<\/p>\n

That’s how I’d interpret it.<\/p>\n

Here’s how the authors of the study interpreted it:<\/p>\n

…we are inclined to suspect the involvement of neurohormonal factors. Studies of rats have found average sex differences in the number of neurons comprising various parts of the visual cortex. Also, gender differences have been found in rat preferences for the amount of sweetness in drinking water. One experiment demonstrated that the sex differences in rat preferences for sweetness was eliminated by depriving males of male-typical testosterone levels in utero. Perhaps, prenatal exposure to testosterone and other sex hormones operates in a similar way to \u201cbias\u201d preferences for certain colors in humans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go figure.<\/p>\n

Important lesson here:\u00a0data never stands alone. It must always be interpreted.<\/p>\n

Originally posted in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. A study published in 2001, to which I was alerted by Family Inequality, asked undergraduate college students their favorite color and presented the results by sex.\u00a0 Men’s favorites are on the left, women’s on the right: The article is a great example of the difference between research findings and the interpretation of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,664,15,373,55,274,675,290],"class_list":["post-22900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-biology","tag-culture","tag-color","tag-gender","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-psychology","tag-sciencetechnology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/24.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22900"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68297,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22900\/revisions\/68297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}