Pink, Blue, and Bad Science

DocDJ writes "Ben Goldacre writes an excellent column in The Guardian called Bad Science, which regularly demonstrates how poor the mainstream media are at reporting science. He recently pointed out the flaws in the reporting of research that purported to show the evolutionary basis of 'blue for boys, pink for girls'." Another Guardian writer, Zoe Williams, has an even more acerbic take on the research.

Comments

China prefers Pink

[lecithin]

I always wondered why people call them pinkos!

"But within this study, was the preference stable across cultures? Well no, not even in this experiment, where they had some Chinese test subjects too. For these participants, not only were the differences in the overlapping curves not so extreme; but the favourite colours were a kind of red for boys and a bit pinker for girls (not blue); and they had more of a red preference overall. Red, you see, is a lucky colour in contemporary Chinese culture."

Re:China prefers Pink

[mr_mischief]

"Red" and "beautiful" translate to the same word in Russian. Hence "red square". I would imagine then that red is pretty popular there, too.

In anthropological etymology, it's common for the first two words for color in a language to represent warmer colors (reddish) and cooler colors (bluish or greenish, although which one of these comes first is split somewhat). They often appear just after the words for shades of light (light/dark). As a language evolves to have more vocabulary, it's typical that finer distinctions are made among colors and more words are added to represent them. Some languages today still share a name for blue and green, while others have two names for two different sections of blues.

There are also psycho-linguistic differences as well. Russians can visually discriminate lighter blues from darker ones more quickly if they happen to fall across the divide for those two categories that is provided by their language. English speakers, having a word for blue and words for many shades of blue, but no distinct separate single-word categories for lighter blue vs. darker blue, were used as a control group. Another such experiment is between Tarahumara and English.

It's possible the color words which are perceived differently by a particular race or which made the most difference to survival (think poisonous plants and animals vs. food sources) for people at the time and place of the language's early development lead to different color words coming about in different orders. It's being studied now whether the words and the groupings the words represent themselves limit and enhance color perception ability.

Heck, in the book of Revelations in the Bible, Death rides a green horse in the original Greek. It's a black horse in most English translations. Why? Well, the "black death" plague and black being a symbol of death mean that's fitting symbolism in modern English. At the time, though, there wasn't embalming, and as this list of Bible translation corrections says, green's the color a dead body turns, just like any rotting meat. The symbolism is completely different, though, when green from the leaves of plants is considered the color of life.

So there's a lot more to thoughts about color than gender. People's eyesight is involved, the colors in nature in different parts of the world, the language those people speak, the literature and symbols they know, and personal preference all figure in. Even if gender does play a role (other than through a societal reenforcement of perceived norms), it must be in conjunction with all of these other influences.

Re:China prefers Pink

[Keebler71]

Got any evidence for that? Because it's not true.

That's funny... my Russian textbooks say it's true. Well, technically the words themselves are different but they are derived from the same root "kras-" What "evidence" do *you* have to the contrary? Oh nevermind... let me just embarrass you.

Re:China prefers Pink

[E 99]

Heck, in the book of Revelations in the Bible, Death rides a green horse in the original Greek. It's a black horse in most English translations. Why? Well, the "black death" plague and black being a symbol of death mean that's fitting symbolism in modern English. At the time, though, there wasn't embalming, and as this list of Bible translation corrections says, green's the color a dead body turns, just like any rotting meat. The symbolism is completely different, though, when green from the leaves of plants is considered the color of life.

You have the wrong horse. The "green" horse is described by the greek word "chloros." Theyer's Lexicon defines it as 1) green, 2) pale yellow. By my brief review on biblegateway, most English translations, especially the most common ones, NIV and NKJV, translate it as "pale," following the KJV, which followed the latin vulgate, which did likewise. "Pale green" is a close second, and "ashen" a close third. So if "chloros" was translated to "pale" in the 382 AD vulgate, which was a revision of multiple older latin translations, I think it's safe to assume that the earliest readers made the same inference from the context, rather than picturing a bright green horse.

The one who rode the black horse, who came before, wasn't Death, but the horseman who held the balances. The greek for his horse's color is "melas" which means black or black ink.

Re:China prefers Pink

[snowgirl]

It's possible the color words which are perceived differently by a particular race or which made the most difference to survival (think poisonous plants and animals vs. food sources) for people at the time and place of the language's early development lead to different color words coming about in different orders. It's being studied now whether the words and the groupings the words represent themselves limit and enhance color perception ability.

Ok, you're falling into the same problem that the author was complaining about in that you're attributing to biology that which is generally cultural. The reason for the ordering of colors is likely not from biological or evolutionary constraints.

Having words for light/dark (intensity) is the first and foremost necessary, as it distinguishes linguistically the difference detected by rods in the eye. Even with the rainbow of colors, we still distinguish between them internally with lighter tints, and darker shades.

Following that is red, then blue/green (as one word) then following less reliably a progression of colors. When the list typically hits blue/green again, that is when the old word is concreted to one, and the newer word is given to the other.

This does not mean that we can visually distinguish these colors better than other colors. In fact, we know by empirical biological evidence that humans can actually distinguish the variations of green the best of all shades.

What has happened here is that a language by assimilating, aquiring or generating a new word for a color or concept is now able to linguistically distinguish color or concept. While we read the rainbow as: Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet, Russians read it as Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Cyan-Blue-Violet, and the Japanese natively read it as Red-Orange-Yellow-Green/Blue-Violet does not mean that one is able to distinguish the difference in the colors, but rather than mentally categorizing it allows that color to be compressed as information in a category, rather than remembered for the complexity of the color it really is.

There have been tests looking for tetrachromats, people with 4 types of cones (essentially, a normal set of cones, and a color-blind set of cones) which can typically only occur in women (as the genes controling this are sex-linked onto the X gene. Yes there are males with more than one X chromosome, but of the 1:500/1000 births that rarity is, along with having only one X chromosome with color-blindness, and the mosaic property occuring in their eye... it's a vanishing small number.) Testing this, they asked women to pair colors together that match, notably giving a number of options that could only be distinguished if visually recognized by a tetrachromat. They found a few, however, the tetrachromats can't tell you why the colors don't match, because there exist no words to express the difference, despite their ability to recognize the mismatch.

It's not that Russian speakers can visually recognize more types of blue than English speakers, it's that they have an easier time categorizing the difference.

Re:China prefers Pink

[kmike]

That's funny... my Russian textbooks say it's true. Well, technically the words themselves are different but they are derived from the same root "kras-"

It's not true for some hundred years already. Are your textbooks that old?
Today "krasny" has only one meaning - "red", no beauty involved, period.

Though when reading an ancient text and encountering "krasna devica" (literally "red damsel"), a modern Russian can get the meaning, but more because this phrase is an idiom used widely in the Russian fairy tales than because he understands "krasny" == "beautiful".

Re:China prefers Pink

[mr_mischief]

The Boston Globe

Wikipedia: Red Square, Origin and Name, which says it means both "red" and "beautiful" although the latter is an archaic meaning of the word.

says specifically that "krasny" has lost the meaning "beautiful" over time and the meanign has been applied to red only

Diary of a Russian Wife: Colors in Russian

Moscow Life states the word means "beautiful" in Old Russian and only took on the exclusive meaning "red" in modern times.

The synopsis for the book "Red in Russian Art" tells us that in earlier Russian, the two words carry the same meaning, and that red is still understood to symbolize beauty.

NY Times travel section

This page states that recently as the fifteenth century "red" and "beautiful" were always both exactly the same word. It has its own list of references, too.

This Russian site states specifically:

Red Square is located just outside the Kremlin, along it's Eastern wall. In the late 15th Century, people came to this square, called Torg or Market Square, to purchase food, livestock, or other wares. By the late 16th Century, it was renamed Trinity Square, and served as the main entrance to the Kremlin. It got the name Krasnaya Ploschad (Red Square) in 17th Century. In this sense Krasnaya (Red) means beautiful. The Pokrovsky (St. Basil's the Blessed) Cathedral, the Lenin's Mausoleum and the State History Museum are located on Red Square.

Hotel-Rates.com page for Maxima Irbis hotel in Moscow

This sites for a bell foundry in Russia states "Krasny" means "red", and "red" means "beautiful".

Photo tour of Moscow, in which the phrase "Red Square (meaning beautiful square in Russian)" is written.

Another tourist of Moscow reports, "Our first stop is St Basil's Cathedral at the end of Red Square. In Russian, it is Krasne square meaning red or beautiful."

Russian traditional costume seller says, "The word "krasnoye" meaning "red" became identified in the people's minds with "prekrasno-ye" meaning "beautiful". Moscow's most beautiful central square is called "Krasnaya Ploshchad" (Red Square)."

You may notice that Red Square isn't really red...it is paved with black and grey stones. In the Russian language, "Krasny"("red") also meant "beautiful", so "Krasnaya Ploschad" can also be translated as "Beautiful Square". The translation "Red Square" which is now used, was established in the 20th century.

talks about the modern link that still exists between "red" and "beauty"

Eduard Shevardnadze relays to the US State Department Chief of Protocol that krasny can mean "beautiful" as well as "red" -- in 1987.

Russia

It's not the Media, it's the Scientists

[E 99]

As the article points out, the speculation that the color preference was to help women gather berries was on the part of the scientists who wrote the paper, not the journalists. And of course, if men had preferred the redder colors, they would have said it was an evolutionary adaptation to give them sensory reinforcement when spearing a woolly mammoth. I agree with the article, and I always get annoyed reading the circular, baseless speculation on the evolutionary causes of whatever is discovered. It has no place in a scientific paper. Give a little room to the unknown. Don't just throw it in the nearest a bucket like a retard.

BTW, the article, with the graphs from the study, which are interesting, is here: http://www.badscience.net/?p=518

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

That's stupid. A hundred years ago it was pink for boys and blue for girls.
Google Answers

Science and Denialism

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems, is sometimes the media gets science wrong out of ignorance.
Other times, there's a 'reason'. Either it's a well oiled PR firm or political gain.

I love this site that blogs about bad science and reference the other CRANKS and WONKS out there that continuously spout off the wrong information and call it science.

They've deemed it the art of Denialism:

This one is classic:

How to write a Terrible Science Paper:
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/09/how_to_w rite_a_terrible_scienc.php

Or Does Smoking Pot Cause Schizophrenia?

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/07/does_smo king_cannabis_cause_sc.php

http://www.scienceblogs.com/denialism/

Great stuff!