Scientists have shown that females are drawn to pinks and reds and men to blues and greens - and they believe the explanation lies our hunter-gatherer past.
As the gatherers of the operation, women's brains became fine-tuned to the purples and reds of ripe fruits and berries.
Pink for a girl and blue for a boy: Scientists have shown a distinct gender preference for certain colours - and tired to explain why
The theory comes from Chinese scientists who asked more than 350 students to study 11 colours for three minutes and then rank them in order of preference.
The students also underwent personality tests.
This revealed the women to favour pink, purple and white and the men to like blue and green, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reports.
The experiment also revealed introverted men to be fond of yellow and neurotic women to be keen on grey.
Orange went down well with women with a sunny disposition, while brown was out of favour with both sexes.
Natural explanation: Women became attuned to the colours pink, purple and red because they equated to ripe fruit
The Zhejiang University researchers said: 'The colour white, usually associated with clean, pure, harmonious and refreshing concepts, and which is usually preferred in Eastern countries, was preferred by our female participants.
'Moreover, consistent with many previous studies, the women in our study preferred "reddish" colours - purple and pink - to "bluish" ones - blue and green.
'This result fitted well with the hunter-gatherer theory on sex difference.
This asserts that a woman's brain is more specialised for gathering-related tasks, such as the identification of ripe fruit or edible red leaves embedded in green foliage.'
Happy hunting: men like blue and green because they represented a good weather for hunting
The ability to pick up on reds and pinks may also have helped in choosing a suitable mate, with rosy cheeks denoting good health and a red tinge the blush of attraction.
The researchers added that the dressing of baby boys in blue and girls in pink may reinforce these inbuilt preferences.
Previous research into the chemistry of the eye and the way the brain processes colour backs up the gender divide.
The Chinese study is far from the first to give substance to the saying 'pink for a girl, blue for a boy'.
When British researchers gave men and women more than 250 different colour choices, the women clearly veered towards the pinks and lilacs, while the men went mainly for blues.
In fact, the correlation was so strong that the Newcastle University researchers claimed to be able to tell someone's sex just be looking at the results of their colour tests.
.. looking at the blueberries; does this make sense? ;-)