Among other things, this explains why it’s really hard for a couple to choose paint colors. Choosing colors, to me, is the hardest part of painting, even when we do it ourselves.
12 thoughts on “Men And Women Really Are Different”
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So my solution to this conundrum is to require wife-unit to let me know only after she has figured out what color she wants. Which will then be the color used. Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to hear the answer. (for which my default is ‘I don’t care’).
I hate painting. But I’ll do it, so long as Mrs Der Schtumpy doesn’t require me to use the color I’ve painted with most often. Haze Grey. Luckily she’s like me on painting, we both like ‘normal’ colors.
Beige, taupe, bone, pale colors like that. Anything but haze grey is OK by me.
The brains of men and woman are different? Whodathunkit? There’s dozens of good jokes in there someplace.
” It also became clear that male subjects needed a slightly longer wavelength to experience the same hue as the female subjects.”
As a result, every damn species of fruit has a color named after it. “Honey, which color do you like better, the Bing Cherry or the Lambert Cherry?”
(insert Sam Kinison scream)
The old joke is that most men can only tell the difference between 7 colors, anyway.
Actually, because the genes for color perception are on the X chromosome a few women have 4-color vision…(!)
The XKCD comic author did a remarkable actual study on this a while back; differences between men and women were mostly minor (women were more liberal with light/dark modifiers, only men called reddish-pinks ‘salmon’). Other findings were pretty amusing and worth a read: http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Actually, because the genes for color perception are on the X chromosome a few women have 4-color vision…
For a very loose definition of “few” — possibly over 50%.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/09/27/do-women-perceive-color-differ/
only men called reddish-pinks ‘salmon’
There was a comic (Jeff Foxworthy) who addressed that. Men can never own anything “pink.” If a man owns a pink shirt, he’ll say it’s rose. “Pink is for sissies — rose is macho!”
Definitely a learned behavior. 🙂
This is not a universal truth. (But what is?) My wife has trouble telling the difference between dark blues and true blacks, which are obviously not the same to my eyes.
this explains why it’s really hard for a couple to choose paint colors.
I suspect that’s due more to the high frequency of color blindness among men, rather than this effect which is apparently quite subtle. (Note that they had to screen out color-deficient individuals in order to discern it.) In addition, it’s recently been discovered that many women have four pigments in the eye, rather than the “normal ” three.
Also, the ability to discern colors is partially a learned skill. Some people do not see indigo as a separate color because they never learned to.
Does this have implications for the designers of cockpit displays?
Not surprising as in hunter-gather societies women had to decide if a fruit/herb/vegetable/Mushroom was the correct species and ripe for picking or not, which required the ability to distinguish color very well (and also why primates have color vision in the first when most mammals do not…) while men needed less color sensitivity to determine that the Mammoth someone just put a spear in was charging and its time get out of the way. I imagine its the same in regards to taste buds…