GENDER DIFFERENCES IN BIOLOGICAL COMPONENTS OF HUE PREFERENCE EXTEND ACROSS ARABIC CULTURE

Back to Page Authors: Abdulrahman al-Rasheed, Aqilah S. al-Anazi, Manal S. al-Qahtani, Ebtsam S. al Rasheed

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Keywords: hue preference, biological components, gender differences, culture differences, L-M cone-contrast, S-(L+M) cone-contrast

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Abstract: Current study aims to extend Ling & Hurlbert’s (2007) work, by replicating their study with Arabic participants. Hurlbert and Ling proposed that color preference is governed by the two sub-systems that underlie color vision (the ‘red-green’ L-M and ‘blue-yellow’ S-(L+M) cone-opponent processes), and that patterns of preference can be summarized by weights on these ‘biological components’. Their study revealed a sex difference in the weighting of the L-M contrast component of British and Chinese color preference, where females preferred 'reddish' colors and males preferred 'greenish colors in contrast to a background. We replicated Hurlbert and Ling’s study, but measured the color preferences of British and Saudi participants (total N = 109). Colour preferences were measured for eight hues using a paired-comparison method where each color was paired with every other color twice and participants selected which color in each pair they preferred. For each individual, a hue preference curve was derived from their colour preference judgments. Least squares multiple regressions were conducted on each individual’s preference curve, with L-M and S-(L+M) cone-contrast as predictors. Cone-contrast accounted for a similar amount of variance as in Hurlbert and Ling’s study, and the sex difference in the weighting of ‘red-green’ cone-contrast was also replicated for both cultures. Implications for theories of colour preference are discussed.

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