SEX DIFFERENCES IN COLOR PERCEPTION 20Q 



Gilbert (4) tested New Haven school children between the ages of six 

 and seventeen and found that in arranging ten closely graduated shades 

 of red cloth girls were slightly superior, though the difference was not 

 sufficiently marked to be significant. Garbini (3), from experiments on 

 600 Italian children, concluded that sex differences were not marked 

 in the development of the color sense. In the fourth year the color 

 sense was more developed in boys and in the fifth year more developed in 

 girls. In the fourth, fifth and sixth years the average color sense was 

 better in boys for all colors except blue and violet. Vitali (12) found 

 the color sense weaker in girls than in boys. Luckey (6) tested 200 

 children for color range in indirect vision and for discrimination and 

 discovered practically no sex differences. 



Of greater interest and importance than the fact of sex differences in 

 color perception is the problem of variability and range. Biologists 

 have found much evidence in support of Darwin's conclusion that there 

 is a' "greater general variability in the male sex." Ellis (2) regards the 

 greater variability of the male as one of the fundamental sex differences 

 and a fact of the greatest significance. Pearson (9) claims to have " laid 

 the axe to the root of the pseudoscientific superstition of the greater 

 variability of the male," but his argument and evidence are unconvincing. 

 Investigations (n), unfortunately very limited in number, have shown 

 that this variational tendency holds of mental traits as well as of bodily 

 characteristics, except during the period of puberty when girls appear to 

 be more variable than boys. The problem is one of great importance for, 

 if the fact of greater deviation of the male from the average is established, 

 we should expect to find in any trait some men who are better than any 

 woman, as well as some men who are worse than any woman — a matter 

 of considerable theoretical and practical significance. 



In color perception there is evidence of the greater variability of 

 men, on the one hand, in the much greater frequency of color-blindness 

 in men than in women, and on the other hand, in the fact that the greatest 

 colorists among painters have been men. There is but little experi- 

 mental evidence. Nichols (8), in the study reported above, notes that 

 while women are on the average superior in arranging all colors according 

 to saturation the two nearest approaches to accuracy were by men. 



