Reflections on Paint-Chart Test, 7 April

From the paint-chart test is it evident that even though gender stereotypes exist, the fact is that they may not necessarily manifest themselves in real life. In giving descriptions, males are expected to be more precise, to the point, and supply concrete nouns in the effort to give tangible examples. On the other hand, females are expected to be more emotional, less factual (‘touchy-feely’), and give examples linked to emotions or their evaluation of the color.

The outcome of today’s little classroom experiment has resulted in relatively equal amounts of long-winded statements, as well as short ones, on both sides of the board. Furthermore, there was an even distribution in the usage of concrete and abstract nouns (in which there was a lack of), as well as emotional, evaluative and one-more-category-that-unfortunately-escapes-me-at-this-moment-sorry adjectives. This seems as if the endeavor at illustrating the differences between the male and female characteristics of description has landed flat on its face.

However, there were differences (subtle, but present) that could be picked out. For one, most of the girls’ responses were aimed at being as accurate as possible, with answers that tried to best describe the color by using other colors (e.g. grayish mustard, magenta, teal, rosy-hued etc). There was only one anomaly to the girls’ response, when Sabby decided to use a personal pronoun and a concrete noun, i.e. “my hairband color” – however it too, was an attempt at being accurate.

The boys, instead, used a variety of methods in describing the color: from likening it to objects (i.e. Tarzan’s underwear, slime, pimple etc), to a slew of seemingly unrelated words (i.e. Nick Yun). A pattern can be picked out from here, which is that boys tend to write down words that would undoubtedly elicit response from their peers (not to mention their teacher), as well as words that satisfy their impulses.

This exercise hence shows that whilst females provide the level-headedness that society requires to function as per normal, males provide comic relief.

Done By: Abigail Ho, Ewen Chong, Goh Ying Ying, Jonathan Neo, Toh Xueqian
[09S07A]