Color Psychology

2021年3月1日 17:17

My name is Anne Grützner and I am a German artist who lives and works in Japan since 2015. Since the beginning of February 2021 I work for GRAND DESIGN TOKYO as a designer. Because I studied art, design and philosophy in Germany and Japan I feel like especially in these fields I have a great number of topics that I can share extensive knowledge or experience with you.

I hope you are going to enjoy reading my articles and be able to extract some new thoughts and informations for yourself.

Have you ever wondered wether you headache could be influenced by the colors of the walls surrounding you?

The above mentioned effects belong scientifically to a field - considered to be a pretty new branch emerging in philosophy - called color psychology.
In a view words he impact that colors have on us and how and why they effect us in numerous ways is what color psychology is researching about. After explaining some basics about color psychology in this article - the following ones are going to introduce a specific color each.
While simply sharing my thoughts and experiences, I also want to dive into the topic a little deeper by creating a colorful mix of topics: scientific aspects meshed up with connections to art, design, history, fashion, lifestyle, music, of course psychology and many others!

Colors do have a huge impact on us…

on our wellbeing at work…
Bad lighting and bad color choices are associated with a range of ill-health effects, both physical and mental, such as eye strain, headaches, fatigue and also stress and anxiety in more high-pressured work environments.
Many studies show, that the „right color choices“ do have a positive impact on the workers productivity and wellbeing.

on the effect of medical treatment…
Medical studies about Placebos have shown, that the color of a tablet can alter the strength of its placebo effect, and larger pills induce a stronger effect than smaller pills.
Though the placebo effect changes from individual to individual, and its strength varies from one disease to the next, orange and red are supposed are generally used as stimulants for improving the functioning of the central nervous system whereas the cool colored pills are used as depressants.

on our eating habits…
Even the plate color can affect how much you eat or how much you serve yourself: Yellow, orange, and red are the three colors that stimulate your appetite most — especially red, because it tends to increase the blood pressure and heart rate — triggering hunger as a result. Gray, black, brown, and purple are examples of colors that suppress our appetites and make us feel less hungry. In general people who constantly ate from blue plates could show better results in their weightless journeys.
Studies also show that people who used plates with colors that highly contrasted the color of their food (for example, red pasta on a white plate) served themselves about 22% more. Those whose plates were low contrast (red pasta on a red plate) tended to take less.

Historical roots some science and six
principles modern color psychology is based on...

Color psychology is considered as a part of the so called modern psychology. It is defined as the study of the effects that colors tend to have over our emotions, behavior or moods. Even though there may not be something like a direct relation between the perception and color itself but they do complement each other in many different ways. Here are some historical approaches and further informations summarized:

There have been many classifications been made about color but I only
want to explain a view which I find interesting, since they show that there are numerous ways to approach this topic…

1
One of the first classification was made by Sir Issac Newton who „invented“ the color wheel in the 17th century . The color wheel is a circle where Newton broadly classifies colors into „Warm“ and „Cold“ ones.
He also introduced the color spectrum for the first time but did not mentioned a lot about the psychological aspects and how It effects human behavior and actions etc.

2
In the 19th century a different approach was made by the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who did many researches on color and its impact on humans.
Goethe's book „Theory of Colors" provides a catalogue of how color is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, considering Sir Issac Newton's observations to be special cases. Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of color, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Means his theory is not a scientific approach at all but at the same time focused on a sort of emotional approach on how we perceive colors. Without setting up models and explanations, he collected specimens. He categorized it in a very visual way leaving specific judgments to ones own perception. According to Goethe, "Newton's error.. was trusting math over the sensations of his eye.“

3
The last person I want to talk about is the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His approach is on the other hand explained color as a pure sensation: as something that is attributed to external bodies. In his book „On Vision and Colors“ he is describing color simply as the activity of the eye's retina. The external body is perceived as the cause of the sensation of color. Since we can not escape easily our anthropocentric worldview we say, "The rose is red." Schopenhauer claims that in reality though, color exists only in the retina of the eye. He says that color is separated from the external object, which is perceived by the intellect's understanding as being the cause of sensations.

Brief scientific background

Beside of these approaches in general color is form of light energy that sends signals to our brain when they are perceived. When the light of the color falls on the eyes retina, the wavelengths of the light are converted into electrical impulses which are passed to our brain (the Hypothalamus). Since the Hypothalamus is the region of our brain that is responsible for governing our emotions and the endocrine system of our bodies. This way our emotions are triggered after the electrical signals are falling over the Hypothalamus and we feel sad, happy, excited, cool or warm etc. depending on the certain kind of impact that the color is leaving on our brain.

With this being said, I want to explain a general model, that modern color psychology is based on. It sets some kind of rules when it comes to trying to think about colors or with a further step deal with colors in any kind of professional field etc. It is comprised of the following 6 principles:

1
Each and every color that is used by humans in different fields of work and life has a specific meaning, which is in most cases ascribed to emotions that each color evokes within our minds.

2
The meaning of each color has either a biologically innate one which is denoted to it since the origin or a learned meaning that is denoted to it as a result of various researches about it. Of course in this case things such as culture, gender and time
do play a role too.

3
Its meaning is assessed by the perceiver immediately after the color
comes into visual contact with the perceiver.

4
The way how it is evaluated determines the emotions which we are associating with a particular color. Thereby this enforces so called
color-motivated behavior.

5
The color influences its meaning over the person as soon as is
comes into visual contact with that color.

6
Not only the impact that a color has but also the meaning that we attach
to it is highly determined by its context. One and the same color may have
a different effect in a different situation or time, country, by the gender of
the perceiver or its way of usage.

Misconceptions around the psychology of color

Even if colors and psychological principles are actively used in medicine they in order to create positive effects on healing illnesses (chromotherapy) or used in design and advertisement to determine the purchase rates of products and services, color psychology does invoke a lot conversation, but is backed with only a little data. We know and experience it every day right? Colors can create a certain kind of mood, they do transport „messages“ and — if you want to say so can „speak“ to us in different ways — that is why color psychology is used in diverse fields just as mentioned above in the examples.

Never the less it is likely because elements such as personal preference, experiences, upbringing, cultural differences, context, etc., often muddy the effect individual colors have on us why this field tends not to be seen as real science. The idea that colors are able to evoke some kind of specific emotion inside of us is claimed to be very inaccurate. Keeping that in mind I want to try to give you a general summary incorporating this differences in my upcoming articles!