Sex-Related Differences in the Color Lexicon

Two experiments investigated sex-related differences in the color vocabulary of college students. In the first experiment, students were required first to provide color names for a series of color stimuli and then to match color names with the same stimuli. Sex-related differences were found only in the matching task. Men used more basic color terms than women, while women were better able to match correctly elaborate color terms with the appropriate stimuli. In the second experiment, students described the colors represented by a series of elaborate color terms. Women not only described more terms than men, they also used more elaborate descriptions. The results indicate that college-age women have a more extensive color vocabulary than men. It is proposed that this difference in the color lexicon indicates that women possess more distinct internal representations for color than men.