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As people age, they tend to spend more time indoors, and the colours in their surroundings may significantly impact their mood and overall well‐being. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to provide informed guidance on colour choices, irrespective of age group. To work towards informed choices, we investigated whether the associations between colours and emotions observed in younger individuals also apply to older adults. We recruited 7393 participants, aged between 16 and 88 years and coming from 31 countries. Each participant associated 12 colour terms with 20 emotion concepts and rated the intensity of each associated emotion. Different age groups exhibited highly similar patterns of colour–emotion associations (average similarity coefficient of.97), with subtle yet meaningful age‐related differences. Adolescents associated the greatest number but the least positively biased emotions with colours. Older participants associated a smaller number but more intense and more positive emotions with all colour terms, displaying a positivity effect. Age also predicted arousal and power biases, varying by colour. Findings suggest parallels in colour–emotion associations between younger and older adults, with subtle but significant age‐related variations. Future studies should next assess whether colour–emotion associations reflect what people actually feel when exposed to colour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]