Interesting psychology/taste studies but, of course, totally unconnected with colour vision or colour science.
If you dig out the original colour science which led to the development of CIE Lab colour space, you'll find some interesting stuff about the relatively limited samples of test subjects used to determine the gamut of human vision in the early (pre-war) days. The researchers did not use a sufficiently large sample, or cover a diversity of genetic origins. Some of it was put right in the 1980s but today, with better illuminant sources and far better access to large samples of people of all origins living in many different parts of the world, the shape of the known human-vision colour space could probably be improved or even expanded.
Taste in colour is also ethnically and culturally influenced and I'll almost bet those 1940s-50s etc researchers relied on students as samples. By 1967, I still wouldn't trust human-sample-group research; by 1990, more chance of the researchers being aware that a trial conducted in Athens Georgia could come out very differently from one held in Athens Greece!
Also, tastes can be changed by art trends. Right now in Europe there is movement to use desaturated, high contrast images with added noise and strong lighting. See: http://www.robertjwilson.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for many examples - the style partly comes from the retouching/pp house used by the ad agency Wilson mainly works for. Although some saturated colour is used today, it almost belongs in the past. Around 1982 I did a four-pager feature in Amateur Photographer called 'Hypercolour' using models in the studio with brilliantly coloured leotards, dyed fans, feathers, vinyl drops, gelled lights - cocktail accessories, fruit, perspex with transillumination etc. It was the first feature of its kind using relatively new E6 slide films (though back in the 1970s, I did a similar saturated colour article in Photo Technique using Recording Film 2483 and E-4 development).
Today, saturated colour is totally out of favour in European fashion and advertising - the exact opposite of the 1980s. And just as most social photography is now monochrome (70% of award winners are b/w or toned effects), even product photography is going that way. I've just done a cover and centre spread feature on a leading Russian wedding photographer, Laslo Gabany, because his fantastic rich colour - Russians love colour! - is so different to the b/w 'art' the western European market has preferred.
David
while Sony and Nikon colors are more neutral, unless you use the Autumn creative style on your A700 :-p