1. In Search of the Intrinsic Emotional Meaning of Color Genov et al.

2. The Problem The idea that there is an association between color and emotion seems obvious to common sense. We are often: “Feeling blue” “Green with envy” Having “black moods” However, despite extensive empirical work for over a century, there is still no consensus that the relationships between color and emotion are more than linguistic convention.

3. Some of the Evidence relationship between color brightness and saturation, and ratings of pleasurableness red and yellow elicit a greater galvanic skin response and EEG activity than green and blue red and yellow are associated with higher state-anxiety scores than blue and green undergraduates scoring above 10 on the Beck Depression Inventory express a preference for black and brown some evidence that colors have an effect on: person perception voting behavior aggression in sports

4. The Classic Stroop RED GREEN BLACK YELLOW BLUE RED YELLOW BLACK RED GREEN BLACK YELLOW BLUE RED YELLOW BLACK

5. The Classic Stroop Word meaning interferes with color naming

6. The Emotional Stroop emotional meaning A number of studies have examined the impact of emotional meaning on color naming. The participant’s emotional state is positively associated with Stroop interference in the color naming of emotionally salient words. For example …

7. The Emotional Stroop WORRY FAIL LOSE DEADLINE PRESSURE UNEASY AFRAID DISTRESSED SAD ALONE SORROW PAIN DOWN SLEEPY TIRED WORTHLESS AnxietyDepression

8. Emotional Stroop and Color The rationale of the study: If colors carry intrinsic emotional meaning, then the color of the ink in which a word is printed might trigger some small emotional response. incompatible If emotion words were printed in colors that triggered incompatible emotions or emotion-related cognitive processes, the result should be more interference and a slower response. That was the basic hypothesis of this study.

9. Study Design Past research on color preference has matched emotion- related words to various colors A Priori Emotion-Color Matches (Collier, 1996) YELLOWBLACKGREENBLUERED CHEERFUL *HOSTILETENDERSECURECHEERFUL * EXCITING **DIGNIFIEDSOOTHEDPEACEFULEXCITING ** CAREFREE ***GLOOMYCAREFREE ***DISTRESSEDEMBARRASSED PLEASED ****ANGRY *****PLEASED ****PLEASANTANGRY ***** PLAYFULSAD ******LEISURELYSAD ******PASSIONATE SOOTHINGUNHAPPYCALM ******* POWERFUL Some emotion words (n=7) had been previously associated with more than one color; e.g. the word “calm” had been paired with the colors green and blue. These words appear with an * in Table 1. This overlap explains the number of different words used (23) as opposed to the total number of words in each list (30).

10. Study Design Based on this, we constructed two lists: CHEERFUL HOSTILE TENDER DIGNIFIED SAD EMBARRASSED Etc. GLOOMY SOOTHING CHEERFUL CAREFREE HOSTILE SECURE Etc. Each color appeared 6 times in the list, each time with a compatible emotion word. Each list consisted of a total of 30 words arranged in two columns. The incompatible list was formed by inverting the color sequence and by randomly pairing the colors with incompatible emotion words. CompatibleNon-compatible

11. Study Design Anticipating the influence of individual differences in “stroopability,” we included two lists from the classic Stroop: XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXX Etc. GREEN YELLOW BLACK BLUE RED YELLOW Etc.

12. Study Design Although previous research has shown some consistency in emotion-color associations across individuals (Collier, 1996), variation also occurs. individual We anticipated that the interference would be greatest for people whose individual emotion-color associations were most similar to our a priori emotion-color match. In effect, these participants would be the ones actually exposed to the non- compatible emotion-color condition that we expected to produce more Stroop interference than the compatible condition. Since any individual variations from these a priori links between color and emotion would obscure the expected effects, in a separate task we asked each participant to match emotion words and colors.

13. Study Design 1. Experimenter calls out emotion terms, one at a time. 2. Participant points to a color from a selection of color patches as quickly as possible. 3. Experimenter makes a note of choice (preference). Emotion-color matching task angry

14. Study Design The order of tasks was as follows: 1. Stroop task: 1. control list (XXXX) 2. either compatible or incompatible lists, counterbalanced 3. classic Stroop list 2. Color-matching task

15. Results as a whole When data for the group as a whole were examined, the expected effect was not apparent. individual differences However, when two sources of individual differences were taken into account, the effect emerged. Here are the details …

16. Results Two-way ANOVA with “type of list” and “list order” as factors: significant list x order interaction indicating a practice effect, F (1,40)=7.91, p<.001. Whichever list appeared second was faster on the average by 2 seconds. for the sample as a whole The lack of significant main effect for compatibility indicates that there was no overall impact of emotional meaning on the speed of color naming for the sample as a whole, F (1, 40)=.96, p=.33. In contrast, the classic Stroop effect was highly significant, F (1,40)=128.53, p<.001. The mean time for naming the ink colors for the list of X’s was 21.0 seconds, while the mean time for naming the inks of the color words was 37.3 seconds.

17. Results Individual differences in color-emotion matching: compatibility index An individual compatibility index was computed for each participant by calculating the ratio of the number of times a participant’s choice of color-emotion word pair coincided with the a priori color-word match to the total number of a priori color-word pairs. This index was a measure of the degree to which the participant had been exposed to pairings of emotion- words and colors that were incompatible according to his or her idiosyncratic preferences. The minimum percent of individual match was 9.5% and the maximum was 52.3%.

18. Results Individual differences in classic Stroop: index of “Stroop effect.” In addition, participants varied widely in how much they were affected by the classic Stroop manipulation. The difference between the time of naming the XXXX stimuli and the classic Stroop stimuli constituted the index of “Stroop effect.” Across our 42 participants, this index ranged from a negligible 0.5-second difference to a 42-second difference between the two lists.

19. Results Multiple regression: The index of color/emotion consistency was not related (r=.07, p=.33) to the classic Stroop index. The target difference in speed of color naming (incompatible - compatible) was positively related (r =.26, p<.05) to the extent to which participants are susceptible to the classic Stroop interference (Stroop-XXXX). the target difference was positively related (r =.28, p<.05) to the personal compatibility index. The Multiple regression equation was also significant (Multiple r =.37, p =.0556), indicating that both factors contributed to the color-emotion compatibility effect.

20. Results ANCOVA: A statistically comparable analysis was an analysis of covariance in which speed on the compatible and incompatible lists was included as a repeated-measures dependent variable, with group order as an independent variable. The two covariates were the Stroop effect index and of the compatibility of color preferences index. In this analysis, the mean time for the incompatible list (M=25.4) was significantly longer than for the compatible list (M=22.4), F (1, 38) = 4.40, p <.05, Eta Square =.104.

21. Discussion The particular contribution of these results is to demonstrate that the associations between color and emotion operate at a “lower”, more automatic level. Stroop-like tasks demand the participants to focus sharply, leaving little surplus attentional resources for conscious consideration of explicit emotion-color associations. Furthermore, participants in Stroop tasks are unaware of the sources of interference, or even of the fact that different kinds of tasks produce different amounts of interference.

22. Discussion The color-emotion associations investigated here are not necessarily independent of cultural conventions or specific learning experiences of individual participants. Indeed, our participants varied considerably in their explicit color-emotion matches, and it was necessary to take these differences into account to detect the effects. However, whatever the origin of the individual or shared color-emotion associations, they appear to function quite automatically.

23. Practical Implications Some evidence that colors affect physiological responses as well as emotional experience and behavior. Projective tests such as the Rorschach use color to index emotional instability. More recently, the ability to perceive emotional content in colors has been related to emotional intelligence, empathy (Mayer, DiPaolo, & Salovey, 1990), and creativity (Dailey, Martindale, & Borkum, 1997).

24. Future Directions Topics that warrant further investigation include: the sources of individual variation in color-emotion association the relationship between physiological responses and subjective emotional responses to colors the exact mechanisms through which colors and emotions interact The exciting research possibilities, which these questions present, should certainly put students of the psychology of color in the pink.