A systematic investigation of conceptual color associations.

Abstract

A systematic investigation of conceptual colour associations. Associations with colours are a rich source of meaning and there has been considerable interest in understanding the capacity of colour to shape our functioning and behaviour as a result of colour associations. However, abstract conceptual colour associations have not been comprehensively investigated and many of the effects of colour on psychological functioning reported in the literature are therefore reliant on ad hoc rationalisations of conceptual associations with colour (e.g. blue-openness) to explain effects. In the present work we conduct a systematic, cross-cultural, mapping of conceptual colour associations using the full set of hues from the World Colour Survey (WCS). In Experiments 1a and 1b we explored the conceptual associations that English monolingual, Chinese bilingual and Chinese monolingual speaking adults have with each of the 11 Basic English Colour Terms (black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, grey). In Experiment 2 we determined which specific physical WCS colours are associated with which concepts in these three language groups. The findings reveal conceptual colour associations that appear to be 'universal' across all cultures (e.g. white-purity; bluewater/sky related; green-health; purple-regal; pink-'female' traits) as well as culture specific (e.g. red and orange-enthusiastic in Chinese; red-attraction in English). Importantly, the findings provide a crucial constraint on, and resource for, future work that seeks to understand the effect of colour on cognition and behaviour, enabling stronger a priori predictions about universal as well as culturally relative effects of conceptual colour associations on cognition and behaviour to be systematically tested.

Investigation of color‐emotion associations of the university students

“…Both results of this research and literature on the color‐emotion association and color perception of blue were mostly positive. In this positive result, the positive aspects of purple tended to be mainly associated with feminity, regal, 63 children, and laughing 41 . For green color, while the color‐emotion association results of this research were compatible with the results of the literature research, color perception results were not compatible with each other.…”

Country and Gender Differences in the Color Association with Energy Drinks: A Survey in Taiwanese and Japanese Students

“…In the inter-country gender-stratified comparison, findings regarding the color association with energy drinks were as follows: The result for Q1 suggests that eye-catching colors in the energy drinks section are mainly red and yellow, regardless of country. Color psychology research has suggested that different colors have different effects on the psychology and behaviors of humans; for example, red increases attention and aggressiveness while blue increases subjective alertness [ 23 , 24 ]. It is noteworthy that some associations between color and psychology are limited to specific populations; for example, red was associated with enthusiasm only in a Chinese population [ 24 ].…”

“…Color psychology research has suggested that different colors have different effects on the psychology and behaviors of humans; for example, red increases attention and aggressiveness while blue increases subjective alertness [ 23 , 24 ]. It is noteworthy that some associations between color and psychology are limited to specific populations; for example, red was associated with enthusiasm only in a Chinese population [ 24 ]. Energy drink distributors might consider that red and yellow are appropriate colors for energy drinks to attract the attention of both Taiwanese and Japanese consumers.…”

Color Judgments of #The Dress and #The Jacket in a Sample of Different Cultures

“…(2020) found that in China, red is associated with marriage and luck, whereas in the UK, luck is instead associated with the color green. Tham et al. (2020) also found that Chinese, but not English participants, associated the color purple with mysterious .…”

“…In general, people tend to associate colors with different concepts and emotions (Chen et al., 2020). Many color associations are consistent across cultures (Tham et al., 2020), especially color-emotion associations (Adams & Osgood, 1973; Hupka et al., 1997; Jonauskaite, Abu-Akel, et al., 2020). For instance, anger is associated with red, and fear is associated with black across cultures (Hupka et al., 1997).…”