 AS A MENTALIST AND PSYCHIC ENTERTAINER I LIKE TO HAVE A THREAD OF SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY RUNNING THROUGH THE PATTER I USE, SO HERE IS A FACT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO PERFORM ANY EFFECT THAT USES THE PERCEPTION OF COLOURS AS A THEME. WHO DECIDES ON THE COLOUR OF THE WALLS, CURTAINS, SOFA AND CUSHIONS IN YOUR HOUSE? When your wife or girlfriend tells you the trousers, shoes and shirt you are wearing don’t go together, do you care or do you just put it down to bad taste. Whenever we decorate or choose something for the house, my wife will say to me, which is your favourite, or which do you prefer. No matter what I say she will usually turn her nose up and say, “I think we’ll go with the other one”. Friends of mine tell me the same happens to them. I have often thought to myself is it social stereotyping when women are left to choose the wallpaper and furnishings for the home and clothes for their men, or is there more to it. In the 1980’s researchers began to find some very real physical differences between the eyes of men and women, differences that highlighted the fact that most men perceive colours differently to women. But why should this be the case? Scientists speculate that enhanced colour perception in women is a result of natural genetic selection. They believe that a woman’s ability to better discriminate between colours originates with our pre-historic ancestors. At that time the women were the primary gatherers during the hunter-gatherer phase of human evolution. This superior colour perception allowed them to better distinguish between fruits, foliage and insects when gathering food in the forests or on the grass lands. I won’t go too deeply into the science here because it is complex, but in simple terms, the gene that allows people to perceive the colour red, is only found on the X chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes whereas men only have one. This means that men have a reduced ability to distinguish between red and green. Amazing then that red is traditionally used to signify danger, traffic lights are red for stop and green for go, your mum always told you to eat your greens and it can be a problem when you are trying to decide if the mushroom pictured here is edible or not.  BY THE WAY IT IS THE TOXIC FLY AGARIC (Amanita muscaria) AND UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO RECOGNISE IT AND COOK IT PROPERLY, LEAVE IT ALONE.
Now here’s the thing, we all know that the primary colours are red, blue and yellow, but what you may not know is that our perception of colour comes from our ability to distinguish, red blue and green. The combination of these three make up all the colours within the human spectrum of colour perception. So ladies next time you nip out to your local DIY store and buy ten tester pots, that are all variations of the colour green, which you then paint in small squares all over the living room wall, or when you pick up twenty swatches of different coloured curtain material for your husband or boyfriend to flick through. Try to keep in mind it’s not that he isn’t interested, it is just that those subtle variations in hue and colour that tantalise your visual perception, are probably as invisible to him as the pile of dirty underwear on his side of the bed. Comments are closed.
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