SEX DIFFERENCES AND VARIABILITY IN 

 COLOR PERCEPTION 



By V. A. C. Henmon 



It is popularly supposed that women possess a more highly developed 

 color sense than men. Women are generally held to be superior both in 

 the recognition of color (the absolute threshold) and in the discrimina- 

 tion of small differences (the differential threshold). Statements to 

 this effect are current in the books which discuss sex differences in 

 mental traits. This superiority of women is variously explained. On 

 the one hand, it is attributed by many to the greater practice in color 

 discrimination acquired by women. The differences would, therefore, 

 be due entirely to individual experience and training. On the other 

 hand, it is held that the difference is congenital and characteristic of sex. 

 On this view it is difficult to see how keenness of color vision could have 

 been a factor in survival and thus be selected, though there is some 

 ground for believing that the more brilliant coloration of the male in 

 some animal forms would be accompanied by a greater discrimination 

 of color in the female. It is still more difficult to suppose that the trait, 

 if it were acquired in individual history, could be transmitted. 



The experimental evidence is unsatisfactory and inconclusive. The 

 tests that have been made on the ability of the sexes in the recognition 

 of colors, or the absolute sensitiveness to color, have given conflicting 

 results. Nichols (8), 1 in one of the earliest experimental studies, mixed 

 red lead, chromate of lead, chromic oxid and ultra-marine blue with 

 white magnesium carbonate and thus made a graduated series of colors 

 varying in saturation from that of the pure pigments to colors indistin- 

 guishable from white. These mixtures were put into small glass phials. 

 Thirty-one men and twenty-three women were asked to select the colors, 

 the phials being mixed in a random order, and arrange them according 

 to hue and saturation. The results showed that men were decidedly 

 more sensitive in the recognition of red, yellow and green, while women 



1 Figures in parentheses refer to the bibliography at the close of the paper. 



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