为什么人类会挑中“红”玫瑰来代表爱情？人类对颜色的偏好究竟源于什么原因？下面这篇文章将给你一点启示。

Anyone who ever wondered why dying vegetation — say like a freshly-clipped red rose — may appeal to a lady friend, might take some comfort in science, which once again offers us a rational answer to one of the world's great irrationalities.

Beyond a universal preference in people for blue, "the long history of color preference studies has been described as 'bewildering, confused and contradictory'," write neuroscientists Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of England's Newcastle University, authors of a new study in the journal Current Biology. "This fact is perhaps surprising," they add, "given the prevalence and longevity¹ of the notion that little girls differ from boys in preferring pink."

But the neuroscientists believe they have an answer to this scientific riddle², uncovering a distaff preference for red, hidden atop the universal liking³ for blue.

In their study, the pair quickly flashed color cards, displaying numerous variations in shade, hue⁴ and saturation⁵, at 208 volunteers, mostly Britishers but with a substantial number of Han Chinese, who were recent emigrants⁶ to the United Kingdom. Tested in three different experiments, the researchers teased out a small but significant preference for reddish hues⁷ in the female volunteers.

Puzzled, the authors realized that most of the difference between men and women came in the form of a preference for red versus⁸ green in the color cards, regardless of the other shadings such as the bluish ones that everyone liked. Why might this be?

Evolution might offer an answer, they reason. Human color perception, the "trichromacy" assessment⁹ of three separate color types — red-green-blue — in our vision is a relatively¹⁰ recent addition to our line of mammals.

In other words, women may actually have evolved to pick up feelings and emotions given away by blushes and other physical signs, while men were out looking for a meal somewhere.

Adding weight to their argument, they found women who scored most feminine on a psychological survey, the "Bem Sex Role inventory," also had the biggest preference for reddish colors. "My love is like a red, red rose," wrote the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1794, doubtless musing¹¹ on just this kind of chemistry.

distaff: 女性的总称

hue: 色调

saturation: 饱和度

trichromacy: 能看到红绿蓝三种颜色的能力，能看到颜色的能力