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do different colours have different psychological meanings?

snorlax

what is your favorite colour and what does it say about you? is they're any truth in colour psychology/ companies using different colours to sell things? http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

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Capt'n Midnight

It's also cultural.

White/Black can be Bad/Good in parts of Africa IIRC.

snorlax

like green for good luck in Ireland?

qwertyphobia

While some of it can be cultural. I suspect most of it is from personal experience if your favourite childhood toy was blue or your bedroom was green thats going to be a significant influencer on emotional associations you have with certain colours.

I don't think any serious thought can be attached to notions that people respond unvirserily to certain colours a certain way.

Playboy

qwertyphobia wrote:

While some of it can be cultural. I suspect most of it is from personal experience if your favourite childhood toy was blue or your bedroom was green thats going to be a significant influencer on emotional associations you have with certain colours.

I don't think any serious thought can be attached to notions that people respond unvirserily to certain colours a certain way.

Yes I agree. Most people would have probably been conditioned through association like in the example you gave.

John

Plus you have to consider does your perception of colour match with everyone else's. For example when I look at the colours red and blue, do you see red and blue.

Undergod

Some languages have different definitions of colours than others. For example, english has nine or so basic colours (blue, red, green,yellow, orange, pink, black, purple, white I think). Lots of languages consider green and blue to be the same colour. and one language (I remember being told it was russian at the time, but I'm not sure if that's correct) creates the distinction between dark and pale blue, much as in english pink and red are distinct.

So in answer to the original poster, I'd say it is possible, but a very limited tool.

John

I had to design an experiment on colour perception last year and researching for it I found lots of interesting things. Berlin and Kay (1969) did some fascinating research into colour perception. According to their criteria English has 11 focal colours* (black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey) whereas a tribe called the Dani only have two words for colours and have trouble learning the names of non-focal colours (Heider, 1972). Another tribe called the Zuni have one word for orange and yellow and have difficulty distinguishing between the two (Lenneberg and Roberts, 1956).

*Focal colours are the basic colours in a language covered by Berlin and Kay's criteria:
(i) only one morpheme can be expressed to define a colour
(ii) its meaning cannot include that of another term
(iii) it must not be a term that is not restricted to certain objects
(iv) it must be a frequently used term, not an archaic or rare term.

Capt'n Midnight

In Irish the word for pink is bándearg "WhiteRed"

http://or.essortment.com/meaningcolours_rgcj.htm - different psychological meanings?

Isabelline has an interesting story. The name of Isabelline, this grayish-yellow colour comes from the colour of the underwear of Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of King Philip II of Spain who at the siege of Ostend vowed not to change her underwear until the city was captured. The siege lasted for three years so the colour of her underwear must have been truly grayish-yellow (isabelline) when the city was finally taken.

Undergod

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

In Irish the word for pink is bándearg "WhiteRed"

So pink is a sort of artificial concept in Irish

p.pete

Hmmm, wonder is there any link as to why German blokes are more likely to wear pink shirts?

EamonnKeane

Pink used to be considered a masculine colour. Also, I always thought it was strange that there was pink, but no common word for light green or light blue. Another thing: the Romans had no word for grey, they called it dark green or dark blue.