Everyone has a favorite color. But, the trick is can you truly understand why? Subconsciously colors make you feel something, or think a certain way. Most colors have some type of meaning behind them. The colors someone chooses to wear, draw with, describe themselves with can have reasoning behind it. In a way it is a sort of communication.
Empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com reiterates the idea that dealing with colors is a type of nonverbal communication (pull up website here). Let’s start with just a few examples of what some colors mean based off of empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com. Red can mean “energy, passion, action, ambition and determination”. Orange represents “social communication and optimism”. Yellow stand for “mind and the intellect”. Also, “It is optimistic and cheerful. However it can also suggest impatience, criticism and cowardice”. Green represents “balance and growth”. Blue stands for “trust and peace”. Purple tends to show “imagination”. Finally, pink tends to be “unconditional love and nurturing” (For the full list and further explanation visit the site here).
What exactly is a color though? Sir Isaac Newton came up with that when he “discovered that when pure white light passes through a prism, it separates into all of the visible colors” (website for color psychology here). Even though these colors have these inherent meanings, does not by any means mean they mean the same thing for everyone. Everyone perceives things differently depending on personality. However, many companies try to determine what colors to use in advertising in oder to evoke emotion in people. The goal, use color to persuade them to their product. Color psychology is, in fact, a huge marketing strategy. In an article titled The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding a study called Impact of Color Marketing “found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be based on color alone” (Get link to article here). Many people do relate certain colors to certain feelings or traits.
Men’s color preference from The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding .
Women’s color preferences from The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding .
How does this happen though? Well according to sciencemuseum.org it is neurons in the hippocampus that affect your emotions. This is part of the limbic system. It is this system and the neurons in the hippocampus that enable you to feel and react on those feelings (get to website from here). Gender also plays a roll in color preference. According to The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding Men prefer bolder colors while women prefer softer colors (article located here). Overall, both genders prefer blue to everything else, as shown in the two diagrams depicted.
Overall, colors have meaning behind them. Whether you realize it or not these meanings affect your emotions. Next time you see an ad question why those colors. Think about how they really make you feel. Now, do you really know what your favorite color is, and why?
This post reminded me when I was painting my room at home. My walls were two different shades of bright blue. Although I loved the colors, I needed a change. I immediately thought of gray and began looking at color samples. While looking, I noticed that certain shades made me feel relaxed, focused, and comfortable. I couldn’t figure out why I felt that way, but I did. I ended up painting my room the shade that made me feel those ways, and it was the best choice. I felt at ease and happy whenever I was in my room, and I believe that had to do largely with the color scheme I chose.
This blog post is definitely interesting to me, and should definitely be interesting to anyone else reading through these posts, simply because in everything we do, in every day and every aspect of our lives, we deal with color. Color is in our clothes and in our surroundings and in our classrooms and in our vehicles. It’s in, literally, absolutely everything. Ergo, it is absolutely essential that we get the “inside scoop” on how these colors can be scientifically employed. The post fascinated me and arose some questions- Did humans associate these meanings with these colors, through society and civic influence? Or have our minds always associated these meanings with these colors since the beginning of time? And if it is mostly subconscious, when did our mind begin to link these colors with these meanings? I think it’s incredible that our subconscious thoughts are so elaborate and constantly working…when we are not even aware. It’s almost scary. Some more information on how the subconscious mind works can be found here
All in all, the post was great. As I stated, I found it to be very enlightening, but it also raised many questions for me. This ultimately will lead to more research on my end and make your blog post much more than what’s simply written here!
A couple years ago, I did a project on how color of food affects our desire to eat it. It’s funny how blue in ads attract humans but it is the opposite with food. Food wise, we are attracted to red, yellow, and brown.