Written by Eleanor McNamara
Edited by Gesi Huang
Often, when we see a color, it elicits a certain feeling. Yellow, for example, is associated with sunshine and happiness, putting us in brighter moods. Red can mean anger or love, depending on the context, and green can mean the outdoors or something gross, depending on its shade. This raises the question: is the feeling a color invokes in the color itself, or as a result of human interpretation of the color? Research suggests it isn’t just about the color, but more about us. Colors hold meaning for us because of three forces: what we share as humans across cultures, what we individually have learned to associate with different colors, and the context where we see it.
Some feelings about colors seem to be linked across cultures, regardless of different worldviews and experiences. In a study that surveyed over 4,500 adults from 30 different nations across six continents, adults were asked to associate 12 colors across 20 emotions. Using an emotion “wheel,” they matched each color with as many emotions as they felt suited, and could also mark how intensely they associated the color and with each emotion. The study found that people in every country connected colors to emotions. Not only did people across the globe match colors with emotions, they also matched them with similar emotions. In the study, “participants tended to link black with sadness, fear, and/or hate; red with love and/or anger; pink with love, joy, and/or pleasure; grey with sadness and/or disappointment; yellow with joy; orange with amusement; and white with relief” (Young, 2020). Additionally, when a color was associated with an emotion, intensities ranked similarly.
Despite these similarities, there were also differences between associations based on cultural differences. For example, “Chinese people associated white with sadness as well as relief… and Greeks associated purple with sadness, whereas other nationalities tended to associate purple with positive emotions” (Young, 2020). There are often fairly obvious reasons for these contrasts. In China, white is often worn to funerals, which may contribute to why Chinese participants linked white with sadness. Similarly, Greek participants associated purple with sadness, while most other nations linked it to positive emotions, possibly because Greek people occasionally wear darker shades of purple when in mourning (Young, 2020).
Beyond culture, many of the feelings we link to colors come from the objects and experiences we personally connect them with. Psychologists Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss proposed the ecological valence theory, which states that “color preferences arise from people’s average affective responses to color-associated objects” (Palmer & Schloss, 2010). Simply, humans like a specific color more if we like the thing it reminds us of its connotation. In their study, they ranked the extent to which each subject liked various colors, testing 32 colors in total. To do so, the researchers used four groups of participants: one rated how much they liked each color, one listed objects each color reminded them of, one rated how appealing those objects were, and one rated how closely each object matched its color. How people felt about these objects explained about 80% of which colors they liked.
Additionally, Palmer and Schloss examined undergraduate students at Stanford (whose colors are red and white) and the University of California, Berkeley (blue and gold). The more school spirit Berkeley students had, the more they liked blue and gold and the less they liked red and white, and the inverse was true for Stanford students. This suggests the feeling comes from the experience, not the color itself: “Students who like Berkeley do not do so because they like blue and gold; they like blue and gold because they like Berkeley” (Palmer & Schloss, 2010). Even so, the same color can differ based on the context we see it in. Psychologists Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier call this the color-in-context theory, which suggests that where and when we see a color shapes what it means to us. When we see red, it can mean danger, especially if we see it on a caution sign or warning label, but it can also mean love when it is associated with hearts. Additionally, “blue on a ribbon is positive (indicating a first place), but blue on a piece of meat is negative (indicating rotten)” (Elliot, 2015). The way we perceive color depends on the context and our state of mind at the time.
Research suggests that the way we feel about color mostly depends on us. Our feelings come from a shared tendency across cultures to connect certain colors with certain emotions, the objects and experiences we individually connect with colors, and the context we see a color in. This explains why yellow often puts me in a good mood, because I associate it with warm, happy days. In the end, a color is not emotional by itself, but requires a human touch to have meaning.
Eleanor McNamara ‘28 is in the College of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached ecm259@cornell.edu
