Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/383

Rh and does not appear among boys, and that lighter violet is more distinctly preferred by the older women than by the older men.

The method of collecting these preferences, it will be recalled, enables one to know the combinational color preferences of the individuals who choose a given color as their favorite. It is thus possible to study the correlation that may exist between the choice of a single color and the choice of a color combination. It will not be worth while to do this except for those colors that are chosen by a relatively large number of individuals. Taking, for example, those who choose blue as their favorite color, we find what combination of colors these "blue-choosers" were most prone to select, and so on for those who chose red, lighter blue, blue violet, red violet, lighter red, violet, and green. The first marked result of such a comparison is to show that the favorite color is extremely apt to reappear in the combination of colors. The evidence for this may be given in some detail. If we represent by 1 the proportionate choice of a combination having the color blue in it in the general records, we find that the number expressing how many of the "blue-choosers" would also choose a combination in which blue occurred would be 2·17, or more than twice as many as the general average. So for red it would be 1·87, for lighter blue 3·98, for lighter red 3·83, for violet 2·85, and for green 4·44; or on an average 3·18, which means that a person who has chosen any one of the above colors as his favorite color is more than three times as likely to choose a combination in which that same color appears as is the average chooser. It also appears that the men obey this tendency slightly more than the women.

Having found characteristic differences between the single color preferences of the sexes, we are prepared to find them as well in the preferences for color combinations. On the whole, the order of preference of the combinations of colors for the men and for the women is very much alike; and when they differ it is frequently doubtful, especially when the combination of colors is rarely selected, whether such differences are accidental or not. Of the masculine preferences those which seem most decided