Does flower preference differ across cultures? A study of Czech and Kenyan populations.

Abstract

Despite the ubiquity of floral themes and motifs in art and culture, human esthetic responses to flowers remain a largely unexplored area of research. Our previous studies revealed that Czechs, irrespective of gender, age, education, or level of expertise, display very similar esthetic responses to flowers of diverse shapes and colors, that is, they like and dislike the same flowers. We wanted to explore further whether these findings are culturally or ecologically dependent. This study compares the flower preferences of the inhabitants of two culturally, geographically, and ecologically highly distinct countries-Czechia (n = 54 and n = 48) and Kenya (n = 54). We asked each subject to rank photographs of 40 species of Czech flowers from the most liked one to the least liked one. We then computed the mean ranking of each flower species in the Kenyan and Czech samples and compared them. We found a very strong positive correlation (r = .79 and r = .77) between the samples, suggesting that Czechs and Kenyans prefer the same flowers. This concordance was unexpected, especially given the small sample sizes and the large differences between them. Moreover, the Czech flower species used as stimuli were probably familiar to Czechs but unknown to Kenyans. Thus, our results suggest that cultural and individual factors might play only a minor role in flower preference, whereas more general inborn preferences may be more important.