The universal and automatic association between brightness and positivity

Specker, Eva; Leder, Helmut; Rosenberg, Raphaël; Hegelmaier, Lisa Mira; Brinkmann, Hanna; Mikuni, Jan; Kawabata, Hideaki

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.04.007

Cited by 34 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…High similarity in emotion associations with colour terms and colour patches held for almost all colours. For instance, we replicated the widely observed association between lightness and positivity (Allan, 2009;Lakens et al, 2013;Meier et al, 2007;Specker et al, 2018;Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994). Whether lightness was perceived or only imagined, white was associated with exclusively positive emotions and black and grey with exclusively negative emotions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…In contrast, in our study, focal red (i.e., named red) was associated with positive and negative emotions (i.e., love, anger, and hate), while light red (i.e., named pink) was exclusively associated with positive emotions (i.e., love, joy, and pleasure; see also Fugate & Franco, 2019;Gil & Le Bigot, 2014;Kaya & Epps, 2004;Sutton & Altarriba, 2016). Despite these observations, lightness and saturation might play a more important role than hue when shades of colour are drastically different from focal colours (e.g., Dael et al, 2016;Palmer et al, 2013;Specker et al, 2018;Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994). High similarity in emotion associations with colour terms and colour patches held for almost all colours.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feeling Blue or Seeing Red? Similar Patterns of Emotion Associations With Colour Patches and Colour Terms

et al. 2020

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For many, colours convey affective meaning. Popular opinion assumes that perception of colour is crucial to influence emotions. However, scientific studies test colour-emotion relationships by presenting colours as patches or terms. When using patches, researchers put great effort into colour presentation. When using terms, researchers have much less control over the colour participants think of. In this between-subjects study, we tested whether emotion associations with colour differ between terms and patches. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts, loading on valence, arousal, and power dimensions, with 12 colours presented as patches (n ¼ 54) or terms (n ¼ 78). We report high similarity in the pattern of associations of specific emotion concepts with terms and patches (r ¼.82), for all colours except purple (r ¼.À23). We also observed differences for black, which is associated with more negative emotions and of higher intensity when presented as a term than a patch. Terms and patches differed little in terms of valence, arousal, and power dimensions. Thus, results from studies on colour-emotion relationships using colour terms or patches should be largely comparable. It is possible that emotions are associated with colour concepts rather than particular perceptions or words of colour.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling Blue or Seeing Red? Similar Patterns of Emotion Associations With Colour Patches and Colour Terms

et al. 2020

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“…Similar associations have been reported in other studies using physical color samples and color concepts . These associations between color dimensions and emotion dimensions seem to hold cross‐culturally with, for example, lighter colors being evaluated as more positive than darker colors . Other lines of research focused on color associations with more specific discrete emotions.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…18,19 These associations between color dimensions and emotion dimensions seem to hold cross-culturally with, for example, lighter colors being evaluated as more positive than darker colors. 20,21 Other lines of research focused on color associations with more specific discrete emotions. For example, in a perceptual study, 22 participants matched self-selected colors to bodily expressions of two high arousal emotions opposite in valence (elated joy, panic fear).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What color do you feel? Color choices are driven by mood

Jonauskaitė

Althaus

Dael

et al. 2018

Color Research & Application

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Popular opinion holds that color has specific affective meaning. Brighter, more chromatic, and warm colors were conceptually linked to positive stimuli and darker, less chromatic, and cool colors to negative stimuli. Whether such systematic color associations exist with actually mood felt remains to be tested. We experimentally induced four moods—joy, relaxation, fear, and sadness—in a between‐subject design (N = 96). Subsequently, we asked participants to select a color, from an unrestricted sample, best representing their current mood. Color choices differed between moods on hue, lightness, and chroma. Yellow hues were systematically associated with joy while yellow‐green hues with relaxation. Lighter colors were matched to joy and relaxation (positive moods) than fear and sadness (negative moods). Most chromatic colors were matched to joy, then relaxation, fear, and sadness. We conclude that color choices represent felt mood to some extent, after accounting for a relatively low specificity for color‐mood associations.

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“…This account suggests that the association between brightness and positivity is a learned association. In contrast, based on the indications of high cross-cultural similarity (e.g., Adams & Osgood, 1973;Saito, 1996) we (Specker et al, 2018) recently postulated that the association between brightness and positivity is an automatic and universal association that most likely arises early in development. We used the Implicit Association Test (hereafter: IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwarz, 1998) as well as an explicit rating task to assess the association between brightness and positivity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Looking on the Bright Side: Replicating the Association between Brightness and Positivity

Specker

Leder

2018

Collabra: Psychology

Self Cite

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The present study is a pre-registered replication of a study by Specker et al. (2018) that tests the hypothesis that brightness of colors is associated with positivity. Our results showed an implicit association between brightness and positivity in both Study 1 and Study 2, however, an explicit association between brightness and positivity was only found in Study 2, thereby replicating 3 out of 4 effects. To investigate these effects in more detail, we present a meta-analysis of both the original and the replication study. This indicated a large effect 1.31 [1.12, 1.51]. In addition, we used meta-analysis to assess potential moderators of the effect, in particular stimulus type (chromatic vs. achromatic) and measure type (implicit vs. explicit). This indicated that the effect is stronger when measured implicitly than when measured explicitly and that the effect is stronger when achromatic stimuli are used. In sum, we take these findings to indicate that there is a strong and replicable association between brightness and positivity. These findings offer researchers interested in the effect concrete tools when designing a study investigating the effect with regard to effect size estimates for power analysis as well as stimulus and measurement design.

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The universal and automatic association between brightness and positivity

Cited by 34 publications

References 46 publications

Feeling Blue or Seeing Red? Similar Patterns of Emotion Associations With Colour Patches and Colour Terms

Feeling Blue or Seeing Red? Similar Patterns of Emotion Associations With Colour Patches and Colour Terms

What color do you feel? Color choices are driven by mood

Looking on the Bright Side: Replicating the Association between Brightness and Positivity

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