Why is it that colors can have an effect on our emotions? Such as: Subjective feelings, expressive behaviors, arousal, and motivation.
Cultural roots, the phenomenon of synesthesia, or can it just be personal preference? I believe it is a combinations of all of these.
However, my hypothesis seems to be lacking something.
Any thoughts?
Some of the feelings that come with color have roots in nature. For example, the blue sky and the blue ocean gives a majestic feeling while green forests and grasses gives a feeling of productivity and life. You can take several colors, find their natural counterpart, and make any connection you would like.
Colors and sounds (tones) have obvious connections to emotions. I believe there was a topic about synesthesia where different tones and numbers produce colors because of some wierd phenomenon in the brain. I forgot which post it was, but the link to the actual BBC article is bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture4.shtml fascinating indeed.
To understand why colours have an effect on our emotions, we’d have to examine two same things at different times where they show different colours. For example: The vast black ocean at night gives more of an eerie feeling as compared to the vast blue ocean in the day that seems serene. Similarly, a forest with no leaves on the trees and with green leaves on trees will evoke two different kinds of emotions respectively. The leafy green forest will be pleasant to the eye but scary to go into and yet, the forest with no leaves on trees will not scare us at all but will not be much of a pleasant sight. So, colours combine with things to form images and these images invoke an emotional response accordingly in us.
You know what I’ll be back in exactly 5 months! Gotta go. Bye!
perhaps colours are subconciously associated with past experiences.
perhaps that is why people have different likes and dislikes in regards to colours.
maybe this sounds completely stupid to you all. im not sure how intelligent everyone here is. you all seem pretty into the whole text book philosophy idea and im just coming up with my own ideas. i don’t know any of the textbook stuff.
Greetings smart_ass,
Welcome to the forum. There is a wide variety of approaches and backgrounds in our little community here. I would recommend that you read a whole thread before you post in it. Some threads here do focus primary on what you might call textbook philosophy. Select your threads with care and here and there should be no worries about speculative posting.
Welcome and enjoy.
You know what? I never thought of that, but it may be very very true. For example: We like seeing the lush green forests, but if an adverse incident happened to us there, then it’s possible that the lush green forest would not evoke that response in us again.
Hi smart_ass…you know I don’t know anything about philosophy either- a series of coincidences brought me here.
I like earth tones a lot, for me they invoke a feeling of connectedness to all things. When I think of something like god or the universal energy field, the fiber that bonds all of us together…I experience these things through the vibration of earth tones, not limited to greens, browns and blues- but including the complicated color combinations of a sunset and the fundamental union of color in a rainbow. In school I studied color theory, how colors work together, creating depth in an image with color… I don’t remember all of the details of the discussion, but I know we talked about emotional evocations of color. Lately I’ve been drawn to the color red, I think this has something to do with a heightened passion and sense of disruption inside of me- it also makes me think of anger and comforts strangely like the thought of something organic, internal, like a womb.
vortical, you are also right just like smart_ass ‘because our emotions affect our like and dislike of colours’ for sure. In fact I think we like a colour more because of the way we feel at that moment rather than our emotions being affected by that colour. That’s so funny, you guys just turned it around and proved it. And I was only thinking of the way the colours affect our emotions. My goodness!
That is so crazy vorticol and smart_ass, you’re more right than anybody else here when you say, ‘that our emotions define our preference of colours.’ It’s like a person who is highly sexed or needs it will usually go for buying a red car and the person with peace of mind in his heart will go for a white one. And if the person who likes the white one is made to sit inside the red then even if he likes the make and interior of the car and the technology, he’ll say no even if he says so at the last minute to buying the red car because the car won’t become him.
Another example is: I like this gray forum when I’m in the mood to philosophize, but when I’m in the mood to write poetry, I like the green forum. Holy!
And the reason why we all identify with green, brown, blue, black and white in general is because these in the form of greenery, soil, sky, night and day respectively, are incorporated through sight in our everyday life so much. The only differences are with the rest of the colours over which people show their own preferences and hence temperament. I always thought it the opposite way, I can’t believe that. The opposite is only true to a small extent.
Grey does kind of suit this forum.
I hate the color pink because I was supposed to be born a man!
vorticol and smart_ass, now I know for sure why philosophy is above the text-books, it’s because philosophy writes a text-book. The reason is because a text-book is there because something came in the mind first. So the mind reigns above the text-book.
Hey Guys! I’ve decided to leave this forum for good. I don’t know why the internet frustrates me so much, I cannot tolerate that anymore. I’ve decided to leave for good. My website I’ve already deleted, so this is it man! This forum was the only one I was really attached to so much and the yoindia one, I already left that one and I’m going to leave this one too. I think I came on the internet around the year 2000. Man! 4yrs of hell and frustration, joy too, but there was so much more frustration. No more internet for me anymore. I think I made a good choice and I hope I’ll stick to it. I will not be back here again.
Coincidentally I have chosen to study this topic for the next few weeks at college, I was quite surprised to see colours and emotions as the first topic on this board.
I havn’t yet started to learn the psychological background and theories relating to the perception of colour, but I would definitely agree with both the suggestion that emotions connected to colours relate to our previous experiences, and the idea that our current emotional state has an effect on our colour preferences.
Interesting…for the last few days I’ve been having an unusual feeling - only it’s not really a feeling but rather a kind of ‘visual’ feeling - a very pale blue colour radiating from my solar plexis - most of the time…like a spiral… and I associate days with colours too - today is Tuesday which is a kind of deep tree green…
I know I know, I’m a fruitcake!
you might be a lucky person! in any case, you have the strength to change that radically your course of life. wish you good luck! 
What happened to BeenaJain? I’m confused!?
Glow, what are you going to school for? I studied color theory because I was getting my bachelors of fine arts.
I don’t know either but I suppose this is one of the manifestations of personal freedom. she’s roughing it…
Did something precipitate her decision? Was it something that happened here or just online in general? Maybe she shouldn’t take all of it so seriously. It’s just drama for the sake of drama to leave that kind of post- whatever, if she doesn’t want to do this she could just stop rather than making a point of telling everyone- she’ll probably come back to see if or how we reacted to it…