BEIJING, Aug. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Researchers found women may be biologically hard-wired to prefer pink, or at least redder colors than men do, said a study Monday in the British journal Current Biology.

    "There does seem to be a universal color preference, which seems to be hard-wired into our brains," said neuroscientist Anya Hurlbert, the study's lead author, "We were very surprised by how robust the results were."

    About 1,000 pairs of colored rectangles were shown on a computer screen to subjects, 171 white Britons and 37 recent Chinese immigrants, who were asked to click on their preferred color as quickly as possible.

    The experiment was originally designed to find if culture dictates color preference. But the results show few differences between subjects with two cultural backgrounds but interesting differences between men and women.

    The most popular single color among women was a heliotrope shade of pink-purple while men had a preference to blue-green hues, picking sky blue most often.

    "This fits with the notion that the red-green dimension of color vision evolved to enable better discrimination of red fruit against green leaves," Hurlbert said.

    Another possibility was that women's interest in purple and pink might help them distinguish subtle changes in emotion in people's faces, Hurlbert said.

    (Agencies)