Colors evoke similar feelings around the world

Date:
September 10, 2020
Source:
Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
Summary:
People all over the world associate colors with emotions. In fact,
people from different parts of the world often associate the same
colors with the same emotions. This was the result of a detailed
survey of 4,598 participants from 30 nations over six continents,
carried out by an international research team.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== People all over the world associate colors with emotions. In fact, people
from different parts of the world often associate the same colors with
the same emotions. This was the result of a detailed survey of 4,598 participants from 30 nations over six continents, carried out by an international research team.

"No similar study of this scope has ever been carried out," said
Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel, member of the participating team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "It allowed us to obtain a comprehensive overview and establish that color-emotion associations are surprisingly
similar around the world."

==========================================================================
In the current issue of Psychological Science, the scientists report
that the participants were asked to fill out an online questionnaire,
which involved assigning up to 20 emotions to twelve different color
terms. The participants were also asked to specify the intensity with
which they associated the color term with the emotion. The researchers
then calculated the national averages for the data and compared these with
the worldwide average. "This revealed a significant global consensus," summarized Oberfeld-Twistel. "For example, throughout the world the
color of red is the only color that is strongly associated with both a
positive feeling -- love -- and a negative feeling - - anger." Brown,
on the other hand, triggers the fewest emotions globally.

However, the scientists also noted some national peculiarities. For
example, the color of white is much more closely associated with sadness
in China than it is in other countries, and the same applies to purple in Greece. "This may be because in China white clothing is worn at funerals
and the color dark purple is used in the Greek Orthodox Church during
periods of mourning," explained Oberfeld-Twistel. In addition to such
cultural peculiarities, the climate may also play a role. According to
the findings from another of the team's studies, yellow tends to be more closely associated with the emotion of joy in countries that see less
sunshine, while the association is weaker in areas that have greater
exposure to it.

According to Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel, it is currently difficult
to say exactly what the causes for global similarities and differences
are. "There is a range of possible influencing factors: language, culture, religion, climate, the history of human development, the human perceptual system." Many fundamental questions about the mechanisms of color-emotion associations have yet to be clarified, he continued. However, by using an in-depth analysis that included the use of a machine learning approach developed by Oberfeld-Twistel, a computer program that improves itself
as the database grows, the scientists have already discovered that the differences between individual nations are greater the more they are geographically separated and/or the greater the differences between the languages spoken in them.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Johannes_Gutenberg_Universitaet_Mainz. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Domicele Jonauskaite, Ahmad Abu-Akel, Nele Dael, Daniel Oberfeld,
Ahmed
M. Abdel-Khalek, Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed, Jean-Philippe
Antonietti, Victoria Bogushevskaya, Amer Chamseddine, Eka Chkonia,
Violeta Corona, Eduardo Fonseca-Pedrero, Yulia A. Griber, Gina
Grimshaw, Aya Ahmed Hasan, Jelena Havelka, Marco Hirnstein, Bodil
S. A. Karlsson, Eric Laurent, Marjaana Lindeman, Lynn Marquardt,
Philip Mefoh, Marietta Papadatou- Pastou, Alicia Pe'rez-Albe'niz,
Niloufar Pouyan, Maya Roinishvili, Lyudmyla Romanyuk, Alejandro
Salgado Montejo, Yann Schrag, Aygun Sultanova, Mari Uusku"la, Suvi
Vainio, Grażyna Wąsowicz, Sunčica Zdravković,
Meng Zhang, Christine Mohr. Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion
Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic
Proximity. Psychological Science, 2020; 095679762094881 DOI:
10.1177/0956797620948810 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910150247.htm

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