[Closed] Do you relate colour to particular emotions?

personally I do not... And I'm an artist and a bit of a hippie so I feel qualified to comment..

the only associations are ones that we are taught IMO

Usually, when people wave a red cape at me I feel an uncontrollable urge to charge at them and try to gore them. I should stop, as I think that's what they want me to do and it never ends well.

what, like green envy, red for anger, red for hot looooove, blue balls and so on?

Think prisons do go with this though - blue lighting is supposed to calm people down.

Hmm, I think I'm meant to come up with something more sophisticated - though our inspiration is meant to be a Dr. Suess piece:

Green days. Deep deep in the sea.
Cool and quite fish. That's me.

On purple days I'm sad.
I groan.
I drag my tail.
I walk alone.

Personally I'm finding it difficult to think of an emotion like anger say, and associate a colour with it. Usually I just get blurred tunnel vision if anything.. 😐

'Black! Black! You lock me in the cellar and feed me pins!'

I have been suffering on and off with mild depression and anxiety for the last couple of years.

Depression is black and grey. Like the clouds up here in Scotland today, pfft!

Anxiety is multi-coloured, not sure which ones though.

Happiness is golden yellow, almost white, like the sun on a hot day.

Only when I watch ren and stimpy

Ho hum - I used to have stronger colour associations when suffering from anxiety/depression.
Depression was also grey, black was an anger that had control over me, and white was the small bright spark when I was happy.
I remember some anxiety attacks where I didn't want to look anything for fear of being over-stimulated - there were flashes of red.

But I'm rather reluctant to go too deep into these emotions from the past.. and I'm told I'm such a calm person these days

Of course you do.

In fact many years ago I read a study done in America of people in identical rooms, all treated exactly the same, but one room was red, one yellow (IIRC) and they recorded the behaviour of each group and it was markedly different.

Big Brother have employed similar techniques in order to cause confrontation too.

And lest we forget...
[img] [/img]

And think of colour association in everyday language...

White flag
Blue in the face
Red faced
Red handed
Purple patch
Feeling blue
Red hot
Black day

Aside from synesthesia, where people genuinely do make involuntary links between different senses and sensations - sounds might be perceived with colours, words might have textures, days of the week might have personalities, colour probably does effect people but not in a way they are necessarily aware of.

Theatres have "Green Rooms" where the cast relax, hospitals are quite green too. It used to be the case that the interiors of fast food chains were predominantly red, because they want a high customer turn over the red encourages customers to leave once they've eaten, rather than hang about reading a book and ordering another coffee. The clever thing was looking into a Macdonalds from the street they looked quite warm and brown and wood coloured and cosy, to invite you in, they only looked predominantly red once you were inside However it seems like Macdonalds has shifted its emphasis, its toned down its interiors and some of them are quite lounge-like, at least in part and it seems they do want people to linger longer.

But that doesn't mean if you ask people they would know it was happening, nobody sitting in a cafe thinks to themselves "No I won't order another cup of tea, I'll go now because the table's red and that means I'm not wanted"

skidartist - spot on.

The colours of restaurants bit reminds me of the other technique used - deliberately uncomfortable chairs. Same ploy used in schools so pupils don't get too comfortable and stay more alert.

But do you associate an emotion with a particular colour?
For example, Is guilt always one colour or does anxiety often take on a certain shade or hue?

There's a very good book on the subject - 'cept I can't recall its name. Google?
On my post grad’ course, the top student did his thesis on just this subject. If you really want to read it I can possibly still get a copy for you. Email me if that’s the case.
Green is an appetite suppressant; hospitals tend to be white, Mc D’s red & yellow (which is the fastest colour) etc.
Also consider colours as primary & secondary, not just colour as this might help in the essay.

I would say we do a good example being - Red is the colour of love, anger and blood.

Perhaps do some reading on olafur eliasson, think he has a book on colour memory.

Josef Albers the Bauhaus colour master might be of interest but his books are heavy reading and may not relate to your brief.

Ettore Sottsass of Memphis fame was also very interested in colour and identity. I believe he designed the tail of aeroplanes which had colours we relate to each country.

White flag
Blue in the face
Red faced
Red handed
Purple patch
Feeling blue
Red hot
Black day

that's exactly my point.. we make these associations because we are taught to with sayings like this..

not because of physiological reaction (IMO)

But don't you think the sayings have come about for a reason?

reminds me of the other technique used - deliberately uncomfortable chairs.

Aye the odd thing in Macdonalds now is they've made the places look softer, even though they are as hard and wipe clean as before - surfaces with a laminate surface that looks like unpainted MDF for instance.

But do you associate an emotion with a particular colour?
For example, Is guilt always one colour or does anxiety often take on a certain shade or hue?

Thats a synesthesia thing, not all that common but people can be synesthetic to varying degrees and in different ways. However though, as some artists, poets, authors etc have been synesthetic themselves they've maybe also helped create a cultural canon of synesthetic metaphors.

Derrick Jarman wrote a very good book about colour (I think it was called Chroma) as he was going blind, incidentally.

Red is the colour of blood because blood is red... You are red faced because your face has actually gone red..

Many thanks to the posters above who have listed references; I will hunt them out for sure - though I should point out that this is not for an essay, but I am to produce images that are meant to illustrate: how I feel on certain 'colour days'..

I think the first difficulty I have is thinking of emotions that I feel so keenly as to be able to put colour to them... Violent white (my colour for anger) is my starting point 🙂

I very much link calmness/serenity with purple.

As a result I have lots of purple coloured flowers in my garden.

My garden is a place to relax and the colour helps bring out that emotion within me.

One of my sons has synesthesia. It's a fascinating subject, just have a google to find out more. For years we knew there was something different with him and finding out about it has made it easier to deal with him - it's quite mad but hugely interesting too.

if i didn't have asbergers (sp?) i would worry that you lot think too much!
but apparantly i do; so i don't worry 😐

You might have to read the question carefully. Is it about how you feel or "us"?
If colours don't trigger responses, it's going to be a short project!
For myself, red = danger but to a Chinaman, it means something entirely different.

Well, my opinion is that it's one of those things that operates in the cognitive subconscious, but which magically disappears the second you try to bring it into your cognitive conscious.

In other words, if you think about it, it's not there. But if you don't, it is.

(Talking about the physiological connections, rather than the taught/learnt cultural dimension.)

Maybe Mac Donalds is unwelcoming not so much because of the actual colours used, but because of their intensity and shade. They are very bright and harsh, and a relaxing green room is likely to be a softer colour green. If the colour itself was linked to the emotion then would green be both the colour of relaxation and of jealousy?
IMO, if you get the atmosphere of your images right for the emotion you are depicting the colour you use is your own choice.
Not an artistic bone in my body tho so stand to be corrected.

The phrase 'green with envy' is just a cultural reference, 'envy' and 'green' only relate in english speaking cultures as its derived from lines in a couple of shakespeare plays where he uses the phrase 'green-eyed jealousy'. It doesn't mean that people turn green/see green / feel green when they are jealous, its just a turn of phrase which for many people is disconnected from its origins*, nobody will sense green in relation to the emotion of jealousy, or be made to feel jealous by the presence of the colour green.

*possibly more so in the states where green is the colour of money, and many people will never have seen any of Shakespeare's movies

Yes. I become overcome with emotion when I see a red flag.
And filled with revolutionary fervour - specially if I also heard these words :

The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.

Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.