Case Study: WHY GIRLS LIKE PINK

BAMIGBOYE TIMILEHIN {je ma'pelle benavat} and PRINCE ADEWALE RASHEED {Rashy Da Prince}, both educational technologists at University of Ilorin 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 pink, something researchers have long known. The study also found that while both men and women liked Pink, women tended to pick shades of pink — reddish-purple hues — while men preferred Orange & perharps Red. To assess whether the color preferences could have been due to culture, the researchers tested 37 Performing Art volunteers from the department of PERFORMING ART, along with the 171 Industrial Chemistry participants, and found the same male-female differences. Though the Performing Art participants showed a greater overall preference for red than their Industrial Chemistry counterparts (red is considered an auspicious color in UNILORIN), unilorin girls and guys diverged in color preference predictably along the red-green axis. “This is the first study to pinpoint a robust sex difference in the red-Pink axis of human color vision,” says Adewale Rasheed, co-author of the study. “And this preference has an evolutionary advantage behind it.” Timilehin speculates that the color preference and women's ability to better discriminate red from pink 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.” Rasheed says that he and his colleagues plan to expand their research in future studies to other departments — not only Performing Art and Industrial Chemistry — and age groups, including staffs, to further test the nature-versus-nurture concept. MODEL : OLAJUMOKE OLUWALARAMI AFOLABI HOBBIES : SINGING,READING LOVE NOVELS AND DANCING SEX : FEMALE AGE : UNDISCLOSED PHONE NUMBER : UNDISCLOSED .