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Colors are visual attribute of things resulting from the light they emit, reflect, or transmit. They have an important role in life as they help in differentiating things from one another. They also influence processing of information and can help in giving good looks to different things, thereby beautifying the life of living beings looking at them (Gil & Le Bigot, 2014).
Colors can be considered as a relevant informational context in dealing with different types of stimuli, and they are found to be related to psychological aspects such as cognition, affect, and perception of human beings. For example, people frequently connect colors with emotions, and color qualities of saturation and brightness may influence emotions. Colors and emotions are also related to each other in some aspects of language as, for example, the word Melancholy is related to black bile, which is indirectly associated with blackness and depression. Similarly, various expressions in English are made by the combination of colors and emotions such as to feel blue means to be depressed, to feel sad, or to feel unwell, and green with envy means appearing envious or jealous after looking at something that someone else has (MacLaury, Paramei, & Dedrick, 2007).
Researchers have developed a theoretical model to relate color with psychological functioning. According to the model, color transmits certain messages that can be described either phylogenetically or ontogenetically. Phylogenetical refers to the transmission of biologically-based messages by colors, and ontogenetical refers to the meaningful connections between experiences and emotions, thereby getting particular messages from colors (Gil & Le Bigot, 2014).
Researchers have found that emotional experiences of a person depend on the presence of stimuli having different modes of reception. For example, emotional experiences can be increased when some stimuli such as video or pictures of objects are joined with sensory stimuli such as sights, tastes, and smells. Moreover, subjective experience can also change the emotional reactions as, for example, studies showed that emotional associations of colors are more complex for older adults as compared to younger children, and this is thought to be due to experience of adults. Although children and adults give positive emotional reactions to almost all colors, adults show different responses and give sophisticated answers. Women respond more positively toward bright colors, whereas men respond more positively toward dark colors (Rogers, 2015).
Colors have an important role in dealing with information; therefore, researchers have done several studies on the influence of colors on psychological and behavioral functioning. Most of the literature deals with the effect of red color on emotions. This color is usually linked to negative effects, so it is mostly used to show danger and feelings of anger and/or failure. On the other hand, green color has gotten less attention by researchers. However, its exact opposite position to red color in the color spectrum shows that it would convey opposite information to that of red color. Green color signifies calmness, pleasantness, and happiness. Research also shows that green color enhances creativity, and evokes safety. In a study, researchers worked on the positive associations of two colors, i.e. pink and green. They used an emotional facial expression identification task in which colors gave the emotional contextual information for the processing of face. In the experiment, they found that pink and green backgrounds increase happy face recognition and disturb recognition of sad face as compared to gray color. Therefore, it shows that positive colors enhance “emotionally congruent facial expressions”, i.e. positive colors help in knowing about positive expressions (Gil & Le Bigot, 2014).
In a study, researchers worked with 24 undergraduate and postgraduate students and studied the effects of six different colors, i.e. vivid blue, pale blue, vivid red, pale red, vivid yellow, and pale yellow, on the emotions of those students. Researchers placed the students in simulated study environments in the presence of different colors. They found that students felt calm, relaxed, and pleasant in the pale color environment. Heart rate, which strongly affects our emotions, is significantly affected by hue. It is increased in the yellow and red color conditions. Hue also significantly affects the emotions of participants as, for example, blue color helped in increasing the calmness and relaxed feelings of students as compared to other colors in the study (AL‐Ayash, Kane, Smith, & Green‐Armytage, 2015).
Children start considering color-emotion relation in the early years of their life. In the early years, this schema or relation is simple but with the passage of time, it becomes complicated. Researchers are of opinion that changes in color-emotion relation, with the passage of time, occur due to advancements in cognition as well as enhanced social experiences. Moreover, every person’s emotional connections with a color are based on that person’s experiences with the color, rather than any general principle. Sometimes, suggestibility also plays an important role in making a color-emotion relation, and people with more tendency of accepting the information or messages have more chances of making a connection between emotion and color (Rogers, 2015).
The relation between colors and emotions, and their use in different fields of life is not new, and researchers have worked on different aspects of these relations as, for example, researchers have worked on perceptual confusion developed between odor and color. Researchers have also worked on the effect of color on the use of internet (Gil & Le Bigot, 2014). Marketing companies also study the effect of colors on emotions to enhance the sale of their products. In a research, four studies were conducted to know the effect of color on consumer perceptions. Researchers worked on the color psychology, aesthetics, and brand personality dimensions; they also studied the roles of saturation on brand personality traits; they also demonstrated the marketers’ strategies to change brand personality and purchase intent of consumers, and the influence of color on likability as well as familiarity of a brand. Researchers found that saturation, value, and hue of the color of a brand could influence the consumers. They also reported that people feel sophisticated feelings, when the product has a purple hue having high value as well as low saturation. They found that the brand personality of a product changes, when consumers see logos in full color. Particular personality ratings also change because of the colors as, for example, personality changes from exciting by using red color to competing by using blue color. However, the personality of a product changes to sophisticated by using black color (Labrecque & Milne, 2012).
After doing the literature survey, it has been found that further studies can be done on the emotions of students in computer study rooms and group study rooms. Moreover, the effect of different colored copies, books, and other stationeries on student can also be analyzed, i.e. use of colors on the emotions of consumers.
References
AL‐Ayash, A., Kane, R. T., Smith, D., & Green‐Armytage, P. (2015). The influence of color on student emotion, heart rate, and performance in learning environments. Color Research & Application.
Gil, S., & Le Bigot, L. (2014). Seeing life through positive-tinted glasses: color-meaning associations. PLoS One, 9(8), e104291. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104291
Labrecque, L. I., & Milne, G. R. (2012). Exciting red and competent blue: the importance of color in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40(5), 711-727.
MacLaury, R. E., Paramei, G. V., & Dedrick, D. (2007). Anthropology of Color: Interdisciplinary Multilevel Modeling: J. Benjamins Publishing Company.
Rogers, R. T. (2015). Color me, please: How color-emotion pairs affect our perceptions. (University Honors Program), Georgia Southern University, http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/151/.
