Color psychology

                               

Color psychology is the study of colors and hues as a determinant of human behavior. Color influences perceptions that are not obvious, such as the taste of food. Colors have qualities that may cause certain emotions in people. How color influences individuals may differ depending on age, gender, and culture. Although color associations may vary contextually from culture to culture, one author asserts that color preference may be relatively uniform across gender and race.

Color psychology is widely used in marketing and branding. Marketers see color as an important factor, since color may influence consumer emotions and perceptions about goods and services. Logos for companies are important, since the logos may attract more customers.

The field of color psychology applies to many other domains such as medical therapy, sports, hospital settings, and even in game design. Carl Jung has been credited as one of the pioneers in this field for his research on the properties and meanings of color in our lives. According to Jung, "color's are the mother tongue of the subconscious".

Before there was color psychology as a field, color was being used for centuries as a method of treatment as early as 2000 BC. The ancient Egyptians documented color "cures" using painted rooms or sunlight shining through crystals as therapy. One of the earliest medical documents, the Huangdi Neijing, documents color diagnoses associated with color healing practices.

In 1810, German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published Theory of Colors, a book explaining his beliefs on the psychological nature of color. In his book, von Goethe describes the color yellow as "serene" and blue as a mixture of "excitement and repose". In 1942, Kurt Goldstein, a German neurologist, conducted a series of experiments on various participants to determine the effects of color on motor function. In one experiment, Goldstein claims that a woman suffering from a cerebral disease was prone to frequently falling over and that wearing red significantly increased this. However, wearing the colors green or blue calmed these symptoms. Other researchers were unable to prove Goldstein's studies to be true through replication, therefore, his hypothesis is considered unproven. While Goldstein's hypothesis was never proven, his work encouraged further research into the physiological effects of color.

Carl Jung is most prominently associated with the pioneering stages of color psychology in the twentieth century. Jung was most interested in the properties and meanings of colors, as well as in art's potential as a tool for psychotherapy. His studies in and writings on color symbolism cover a broad range of topics, from mandalas to the works of Picasso, to the near-universal sovereignty of the color gold, the lattermost of which, according to Charles A. Riley II, "expresses... the apex of spirituality, and intuition". In pursuing his studies of color use and effects across cultures and time periods, as well as in examining his patients' self-created mandalas, Jung attempted to unlock and develop a language, or code, the ciphers of which would be colors. He looked to alchemy to further his understanding of the secret language of color, finding the key to his research in alchemical transmutation. His work has historically informed the modern field of color psychology.

Referential meaning arises from the network of semantic associations that emerge through exposure to color stimuli. As such, referential meaning is learned and often dependent on contextual cues. For example, the referential meaning conveyed by the use of the color brown in effervescent beverages can evoke notions of cola taste, which are drawn from the learned association of prominent cola brands adding caramel color to their products.

Embodied meaning results from attributes embodied in the aesthetic stimulus, independent of context and the semantic content it may evoke. This meaning is evoked from properties within the stimulus, that is feelings and other responses are activated simply from exposure to the color. For example, long wavelength colors such as red may stimulate arousal and increase attention. This model proposes that biological responses to color are driven by the embodied meaning of a color

The model also considers that influencers of color experience do not act in isolation. For instance, some learned color associations may represent a cognitive reinforcing or alteration of biologically based phenomena. Moreover, color associations may vary by culture and learned color associations may also influence some cultural aspects.

The theory notes the importance of context for referential meanings of color.

Multiple researchers propose that one factor in the evolution of primate trichromatic color vision is to allow for better perception of the emotions or condition of others that can prove highly useful for complex social interaction. For example, flushed or pale skin can non-verbally communicate whether one is excited or sickly. Besides its use for social situations, color has an impact in multiple facets of our perceptions.

Taste-                                                                                                                                                            Color also affects how people perceive the edibility and flavor of foods and drinks. This extends beyond just the color of the food. The packaging of the food and its placement among other foods and objects also affect how people perceive it. For example, in food stores, bread is normally sold in packaging decorated with or tinted with golden or brown tones to promote the idea of home-baked and oven-freshness. People might mistake a cherry-flavored drink for being lime or lemon flavored if that drink was a green color. Additionally, a flavor may seem to be intensified by a color. People may rate a brown M&M as more chocolate flavored than a green M&M, based on color alone. This interaction may be mediated by our perceptions as well, especially depending on cultural expectation. Research in the UK demonstrated that individuals receiving a brown drink would have different expectations for the taste while someone from Taiwan may expect a grape-flavored drink because popular brown colored drinks in their culture are typically grape-flavored.

Time-                                                                                                                                                      Recent studies showed that the perceived duration of a red screen was longer than that of a blue screen. The results reflected gender differences; men overestimated the duration of the red screen. Additionally, the reaction times to a red screen were faster than those to a blue screen. Participants who reacted quickly to a red screen overestimated its duration. In a demo with 150 people chosen at random, it was found that inside a pod bathed in blue color, the average perceived duration of a minute was 11 seconds shorter than while in a pod bathed in red color. However, another study looking at perceived duration found opposite results regarding blue and red stimuli.

Light-                                                                                                                                                              The color of a light source affects the apparent color of an object the light shines on. For example, the color of an object might appear different in the light from the sun versus from an incandescent light bulb. With the incandescent light bulb, the object might appear more orange or "brownish", and dark colors might look even darker. Light and the color of an object may affect how one perceives its positioning. If light or shadow, or the color of the object, masks an object's true contour it may appear to be shaped differently from reality. Objects under a uniform light-source will promote better impression of three-dimensional shape. The color of an object may affect whether or not it seems to be in motion. In particular, the trajectories of objects under a light source whose intensity varies with space are more difficult to determine than identical objects under a uniform light source. This could possibly be interpreted as interference between motion and color perception, both of which are more difficult under variable lighting.

Blue lights (R) at the Woodside LIRR train station in New York. Blue light causes people to feel relaxed, which has led countries to install blue street lights in order to decrease suicide rates. A railroad company in Japan installed blue lighting at its stations in October 2009 in an effort to reduce the number of rail suicide attempts, although the effect of this technique has been questioned. In 2000, the city of Glasgow installed blue street lighting in certain neighborhoods and subsequently reported the anecdotal finding of reduced crime in these areas.

Lighting color could also have a strong effect on perceived experience in stores and other situations. For example, time seems to pass more slowly under red lights and time seems to pass quickly under blue light. Casinos take full advantage of this phenomenon by using lighting color to get people to spend more time and hence more money in their casino. However, a presumed influence of colored light on risk behavior could not be demonstrated.