Ummm... I thought that was a sign of unhealthy high blood pressure?

Or sunburn?

To reach the same conclusion, they could have just gotten themselves invited to a lot of spring & summer weddings and made notes on the flowers and bridesmaids' dresses! Lots more fun (and perhaps fattening) too.

"Females were the ones who gathered red fruit against a green background," says Hurlbert. "Red is healthy in faces and in fruits." As for the universal preference for blue, she offers: "Going back to our 'savannah' days, we would have a natural preference for a clear blue sky, because it signaled good weather. Clear blue also signals a good water source."

I skimmed over the bit and presumed the study was in babies, until I reached the bottom (in stunned silence). I suppose, as a Philadelphian, I have some genetic based preference for the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles. I have noticed this genetically influenced preference in several thousand other Philadelphians.

I would say, certainly, though that reference to hunting and gathering and savannahs in academic or scientific articles could be affirmatively be linked, at the 95% level, to in utero brain damage to the academics.

I really really hate this kind of "research."

Tracy Clark-Flory,

You seem to make an adequate criticism of their hypothesis, but in jumping to the conclusion that yours is right and theirs is wrong, you are very much non-scientific.

Critique their research or their conclusion, but at least they went out and gathered the data.

What have you done apart from acting smug and assuming it is nurture?

Let's be reality based.

Now, Tracy, here is a dare for you.

Please read Wendy Kaminer's latest blog post concerning "Imus: The Lawsuit."

http://thephoenix.com/TheFreeForAll/PermaLink,guid,543803c2-9a76-4dc6-ad18-49ba0578941e.aspx

It should be very much Broadsheet material. Feminist lawyer speaking about a lawsuit from a member of the Rutger's women's basketball team.

Read it. Post. I dare you.

Oh give me a briak, anyone who has studied color knows tht most people are mor relaxed seeing blues and greens and more alarmed at seeing reds and yellows. In the 17th century Pink was considered a color of maleness. I suspect the influence on pink has been created by conditioning. You can bet some marketing firm

paying for this study.

Not eveyrone looks pretty in pink, I in fact hate it and am appalled at the number fo mothers who are now running to pink again for thier girls rooms. I thought we got rid of those male female stero types in the 70s. Pink is for mushy minds.

Ooh, a DARE from Anonymous! How very mature, adult and scientific.

Actually, anonymous, rejecting a study based on questionable methodology and lack of supporting studies is indeed scientific. If there are more studies done, peer reviewed and that use varying methodology and they all still show the same thing, then you'd have a better case for your derision. However, those studies and theories should also make an effort to determine the origins of the group's preferences or you just have a result set with unsupported hypotheses attempting to explain it.

No wonder you're "anonymous."

Reading anonymous:

Tracy Clark-Flory,

You seem to make an adequate criticism of their hypothesis, but in jumping to the conclusion that yours is right and theirs is wrong, you are very much non-scientific.

Critique their research or their conclusion, but at least they went out and gathered the data.

What have you done apart from acting smug and assuming it is nurture?

Let's be reality based.

one would conclude that TCF actually insisted - "smugly" - that the preference was based on nurture. But, rereading her article, I found she said no such thing.

Bad reading comprehension, anonymous? Reality-overwhelming assumptions about "feminists"? Or just a non sequiter?

As for your "dare": you forgot to say "double-dare with sugar on top." What are you, 12?

Nah, let's not take into consideration the differences in choice among Latinas, African American women and other minorities. And screw it, the Industrial Revolution never happened. Oh yes, let's not have any hard data at all!

"Females were the ones who gathered red fruit against a green background"

What area of the world are they referring to?

My study (just published, but you can't find it) of these "evolutionary" studies that attempt to explain consumer "choice" in a marketplace that lacks it: their focus on the Occident makes them brown, like pieces of.....

of women appropriating male power icons for their own use.

In past centuries blue was the girls' color and pink the boys'. Men also wore silk stocking in past centuries.

You can see the pattern. Women covet these things, adopt them and take away from men another reason for men to be luscious to women. I do not know that pink swathed or silk stockinged women are much of a lure to men though.

The equivalent in men would be to take on some stereotypically female elements as their own. For instance men shaving completely and parading around would be one way to adopt the traditional female role as body hairless. The fashion industry does utilize this in its ads to sell more tchochkes.

Another thing is when guys paint their nails. The PUA on the TV show paints his nails black. Girls think he is adorable apparently.

according to them. Some people will never be satisfied with any methodology which reaches conclusions they don't like.

The study actually is interesting, but as a one-time anthropologist, the evolutionary explanations are past stupid. Lots of fruit isn't green, fruit would have been a smaller part of the diet on the savanna, and the savanna isn't particularly green anyway. Evolutionary explanations for things are very rarely that simple; just for starters, just because something is there, it isn't always because it is useful. Think of appendixes & gall bladders & wisdom teeth.

But the very clear differences in the study are indeed interesting, and given their size, very possibly well beyond anything simply attributable to cultural conditioning. Me, I would wonder about the effect of exposure to hormones on rod & cone development. There has been a fair amount of research suggesting that males and females tend to visually perceive somewhat differently, though it is unclear how or why, and most of the research has focussed on neurological causes. It might simply have been physical all along.