The Role of Color in the Perception of Emotion

Abstract:

Perceiving a person’s emotions based on their facial expressions is a common human mechanism to understanding the internal state of other people Although how are we sure what we perceive is correct? Previous research has found that different colors can change the interpretation of certain stimuli (Stilwell & Gaspelin, 2021). For example, the color red can be interpreted as anger or feelings of arousal, while the color blue can be interpreted as calmer feelings such as relaxation (Mehta & Zhu, 2009). In the current research, we are interested in whether colors can influence how people interpret the emotional expression of others. In this study, we presented the same set of faces with neutral expressions but with different colored frames to test whether the perception of the facial expression changes as the color of the frame changes Participants viewed a set of identical images of people with neutral expressions but with different colored borders. Participants were required to determine the appropriate emotion for the person in the photograph. We are interested in whether the color of the border, although irrelevant for the task, will still influence peoples’ perception of the emotion in the photograph.