Polarities influence implicit associations between colour and emotion

Abstract

Colours are linked to emotional concepts. Research on the effect of red in particular has been extensive, and evidence shows that positive as well as negative associations can be salient in different contexts. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the contextual factor of polarity. According to the polaritycorrespondence principle, negative and positive category poles are assigned to the binary response categories (here positive vs. negative valence) and the perceptual dimension (green vs. red) in a discrimination task. Response facilitation occurs only where the conceptual category (valence) and the perceptual feature (colour) share the same pole (i.e., where both are plus or both are minus). We asked participants (n = 140) to classify the valence of green and red words within two types of blocks: (a) where all words were of the same colour (monochromatic conditions) providing no opposition in the perceptual dimension, and (b) where red and green words were randomly mixed (mixed-colour conditions). Our results show that red facilitates responses to negative words when the colour green is present (mixed-colour conditions) but not when it is absent (monochromatic conditions). This is in line with the polarity-correspondence principle, but colourspecific valence-affect associations contribute to the found effects.

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“…Interestingly, this is exactly what has been reported in some experimental situations: for example, if two features – one relevant and one irrelevant – lend themselves to humans’ consistent coding as “positive” or prioritized versus “negative” or less prioritized ( Proctor and Cho, 2006 ), one can find indeed that responses to positive features are faster ( Lakens, 2012 ; Kawai et al, 2020 ). Take the example of the study by Kawai et al (2020) . Participants were asked to categorize words (e.g., enemy) as positive or negative.…”

“…Thus, the congruence effect in this case is weaker (cf. Lakens, 2012 ; Kawai et al, 2020 ). Importantly, there was no congruence effect in the monochromatic blocks in which the colors did not differ and, thus, participants were not inclined to assign choice-elicited preferences to different colors.…”

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“…It is not unusual for an experiment to require several hundreds of different stimuli (especially when each stimulus is presented repeatedly in different forms, e.g., varying hue, etc. ; e.g., Huang et al, 2015;Kawai et al, 2020;Oliva & Schyns, 2000). Calculating with the average file size of IAPS images (262 KB; cf.…”

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“…However, for about half of the participants, the green and red words were presented in separate blocks: all words shown first in green, and then again all words in red, or vice versa (all in red, then all in green). For these participants, color effects on valence should be absent (due to no polarity; Kawai, Lukács, & Ansorge, 2020;Proctor & Cho, 2006): no Valence × Color interaction expected in this group. Hence the threeway Valence × Color × Group interaction should be significant.…”