Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn't much anybody can do about it, researchers said in one of the first studies to show scientifically that there are gender-based color  preferences.

Researchers said these differences may have a basis in evolution in which females developed a preference for reddish colors associated with riper fruit and healthier faces.

Recent studies have suggested there is a universal preference for "blue," and there has not been much previous evidence to support the idea of sex differences when picking colors, said Anya Hurlbert, a neuroscientist (1) at Newcastle University who led the study.

"We speculate (2) that this sex difference arose from sex-specific functional specialization (3) in the evolutionary division of labor," she wrote in Current Biology. "There are biological reasons for liking reddish things."

In the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1,000 pairs of colored rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best as quickly as possible.

Afterwards, Hurlbert and colleagues plotted the results along the color spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate (4) towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum.

"Women have a very clear pattern. It's low in the yellow and green regions and rises to a peak in the purplish to reddish region," she said.

Hurlbert believes women's preference for pink may have evolved on top of a natural, universal preference for blue.

"When you add it together you get the colors they intrinsically (5) like, you get bluish red, which is sort of lilac (6) or pink," she said.

1.neuroscientist:神经科学家

2.speculate:推测, 思索

3.specialization:特殊化, 专门化, 特化作用