It seems that colour–emotion associations are ubiquitous (e.g., Adams & Osgood, 1973 Allen & Guilford, 1936 Hupka, Zaleski, Otto, Reidl, & Tarabrina, 1997 Ou et al., 2018 Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994). We feel blue, see red, or we are green with envy we wear white to weddings and black to funerals and we give red hearts to our loved ones on Valentine’s Day. It is possible that emotions are associated with colour concepts rather than particular perceptions or words of colour.Īcross languages and cultural traditions, we use colour to express and convey emotional states.

Thus, results from studies on colour–emotion relationships using colour terms or patches should be largely comparable. Terms and patches differed little in terms of valence, arousal, and power dimensions. We also observed differences for black, which is associated with more negative emotions and of higher intensity when presented as a term than a patch. We report high similarity in the pattern of associations of specific emotion concepts with terms and patches ( r = .82), for all colours except purple ( r = .−23). Participants associated 20 emotion concepts, loading on valence, arousal, and power dimensions, with 12 colours presented as patches ( n = 54) or terms ( n = 78). In this between-subjects study, we tested whether emotion associations with colour differ between terms and patches. When using terms, researchers have much less control over the colour participants think of. When using patches, researchers put great effort into colour presentation. However, scientific studies test colour–emotion relationships by presenting colours as patches or terms. Popular opinion assumes that perception of colour is crucial to influence emotions. For many, colours convey affective meaning.

Emotion colors feel wheel