Search

Colour-emotion association data show a universal consistency in colour-emotion associations, apart from emotion associations with PURPLE. Possibly, its heterogeneity was due to different cognates used as basic colour terms between languages. We analysed emotion associations with PURPLE across 30 populations, 28 countries, and 16 languages (4,008 participants in total). Crucially, these languages used the cognates of purple, lilac, or violet to denote the basic PURPLE category. We found small but systematic affective differences between these cognates. They were ordered as purple > lilac > violet on valence, arousal, and power biases. Statistically, the cognate purple was the most strongly biased towards associations with positive emotions, and lilac was biased more strongly than violet. Purple was more biased towards high power emotions than violet, but cognates did not differ on arousal biases. Additionally, affective biases differed by population, suggesting high variability within each cognate. Thus, cognates partly account for inconsistencies in the meaning of PURPLE, without explaining their origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, a picture of a Dress (henceforth the Dress) triggered popular and scientific interest; some reported seeing the Dress in white and gold (W&G) and others in blue and black (B&B). We aimed to describe the phenomenon and investigate the role of contextualization. Few days after the Dress had appeared on the Internet, we projected it to 240 students on two large screens in the classroom. Participants reported seeing the Dress in B&B (48%), W&G (38%), or blue and brown (B&Br; 7%). Amongst numerous socio-demographic variables, we only observed that W&G viewers were most likely to have always seen the Dress as W&G. In the laboratory, we tested how much contextual information is necessary for the phenomenon to occur. Fifty-seven participants selected colours most precisely matching predominant colours of parts or the full Dress. We presented, in this order, small squares (a), vertical strips (b), and the full Dress (c). We found that (1) B&B, B&Br, and W&G viewers had selected colours differing in lightness and chroma levels for contextualized images only (b, c conditions) and hue for fully contextualized condition only (c) and (2) B&B viewers selected colours most closely matching displayed colours of the Dress. Thus, the Dress phenomenon emerges due to inter-individual differences in subjectively perceived lightness, chroma, and hue, at least when all aspects of the picture need to be integrated. Our results support the previous conclusions that contextual information is key to colour perception; it should be important to understand how this actually happens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colours carry social connotations like pink for girls and blue for boys. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated whether such early gender coding might be reflected in absolute colour preferences in children and adults of both genders. In two studies, participants selected their favourite (and least favourite, Study 2) colour from an unrestricted sample of colours. We tested 129 Swiss children (Study 1, 10–14 years-old, 68 boys) and 180 Swiss adults (Study 2, 17–48 years-old, 88 men). In children, we observed that girls chose pink/purple as their favourite hue more often than boys did, the most common favourite hue in girls and boys was blue, and boys chose red as their favourite more often than girls did. In adults, we observed that both genders almost never choose pink as their favourite, blue was a common favourite colour, and women were more likely to favour red than were men. In an additional study (n = 183 Swiss participants, 47 men), we tested whether liking of pink, blue, and red was related to emotion associations with these colours. Pink was associated with positive emotions to the same extent as blue and red. Women further associated more positive emotions with pink than did men. We conclude that some commonalities (blue) and gender differences (pink and red) exist in absolute colour preferences. These differences, however, cannot be fully accounted by emotional associations. We speculate about these gendered colour preferences in relation to gender stereotypes and status differences between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]