Kenapa Cewek Senang Warna Pink?

Why Girls Like Pink

When shopping for baby gifts, everyone knows that blue is for boys and pink
is for girls. But now there's evidence that those colors may be more than
just marketing gimmicks. According to a new study in the Aug. 21 issue of
Current Biology, women may be biologically programmed to prefer the color
pink - or, at least, redder shades of blue - more than men.
Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling, neuroscientists at Newcastle University
conducted a color-selection experiment with 208 volunteers between the ages
of 20 and 26. Participants were asked to move a mouse cursor as quickly as
possible to their preferred color from a series of paired, colored
rectangles, controlled for hue, saturation and lightness. Each person
completed three separate tests, then was retested two weeks later.
On average, the study found, all people generally prefer blue, something
researchers have long known. The study also found that while both men and
women liked blue, women tended to pick redder shades of blue -
reddish-purple hues - while men preferred blue-green. To assess whether the
color preferences could have been due to culture, the researchers tested 37
Han Chinese volunteers from mainland China, along with the 171 British
Caucasian participants, and found the same male-female differences. Though
the Chinese participants showed a greater overall preference for red than
their British counterparts (red is considered an auspicious color in China),
Chinese women and men diverged in color preference predictably along the
red-green axis.
"This is the first study to pinpoint a robust sex difference in the
red-green axis of human color vision," says Yazhu Ling, co-author of the
study. "And this preference has an evolutionary advantage behind it."
Ling speculates that the color preference and women's ability to better
discriminate red from green could have evolved due to sex-specific divisions
of labor: while men hunted, women gatherered, and they had to be able to
spot ripe berries and fruits. Another theory suggests that women, as
caregivers who need to be particularly sensitive to, say, a child flushed
with fever, have developed a sensitivity to reddish changes in skin color, a
skill that enhances their abilities as the "emphathizer.

"
Ling says that she and her colleagues plan to expand their research in
future studies to other cultures - not only British and Chinese - and age
groups, including infants, to further test the nature-versus-nurture
concept. [Time]