Women see more color than men-- Fact or Fiction?

[heather2012]

SO, my boyfriend bought my engagement ring on NYE, but before he purchased it we went to a jeweler who told us that women see more color in diamonds than men are capable of (except for him of course since when he went through training he was surprised to find out that he had a very perceptive eye to color on the same level as a woman does) and to make sure he gets a ring that is within the D-G color range.

We didn't end up buying a ring from him because I know too much about diamonds and of course understand that as a retail storefront jeweler the markup would be too extreme. BUT, I thought to myself what a great sales tactic IF he is lying---telling men who come into the store to only buy D-G color grade diamonds because although they may not see the color difference, their potential fiance's will.

I am just curious, is there any truth to this or was he just full of BullllllllllllSheeeeeeeeeet? I tried looking this up online and couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

 

[Rockdiamond]

It sounds like a line of BS, no doubt....but I can relate an interesting experience from when I worked at Harry Winston back in the '70's.
They would only hire women to do color grading- and they'd only work till about 3pm.
The thought was that women would be more likely to spot the subtle differences in shade.

Since then I've discovered it's not really about a person's gender.
But there are great variances between us in how we perceive color.
Basically, many people are afflicted with varying degrees of color blindness, while others can perceive the slightest difference in shade..

 

[heather2012]

Thank you so much for the clarification! That makes a lot more sense to me...it sounded a little too fishy that this jeweler just so happened to be blessed with the same degree of eyesight that only women could have.

 

[DiamondsAndRust]

I have heard/read that before, something to do with genes responsible for colour vision being carried by the X chromosome (also a reason why there are more men than women who are colourblind). That's not to say that will be the case for every woman/man but rather a general trend with individual exceptions on both sides.

 

[partgypsy]

Hmm I haven't heard of this, but if so it would be a pretty subtle difference i.e. a huuge overlap in performance between males and females. In one of our classes we tested everyone on color perception. If you remove the 2 guys who had some form of color blindness I don't recall a difference in performance between males and females.

I would think age (development of cataracts) would have a much bigger effect.

So much of color perception is actually relative, in that in every day viewing, the differences between grading of d through g are be difficult to detect without direct comparision of the grades, with white backgrounds, etc.

Someone posted a color perception test here and I got 100%, yet I'm not color-sensitive (I am totally happy with my H-colored stone).

 

[Karl_K]

I think women tend to pay more attention to color than most guys do on a day to day basis.
As far as being able to see subtle differences it varies by person.
It is a fact that color blindness is much more common in men.

 

[yssie]

I hadn't heard this before.

Google:
http://www.asu.edu/news/research/womencolors_090104.htm
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/07/do_women_perceive_color_differ_3.php
'Course, neither has any of those silly add-ons like citations or acknowledgements so who knows! Would be interesting to read a properly vetted study though.

I remember Kenny posted this in Hangout some time ago http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?pageid=77&lang=en
I did perfectly and DH did terribly so in *this* household it's apparently true


Edit - part gypsy, I think we're talking about the same one! And Karl, that's a good point re. nurture...

Here's one with references: http://www.colormatters.com/color-symbolism/gender-differences