What Do You See

What is your favorite color? Pink? Yellow? Green? Black?

When you see your favorite color, (or colors) how does it make you feel?

A rainbow of feelings

It is a fact that every color is responsible for making us feel certain emotions, and this fact has been used for many years to influence us in a variety of ways. For example…

• The food industry has discovered that people won’t buy some foods if they are in green packages because the green reminds them of mold BUT some food (vegetables) sells better in green packages because it makes them feel like the food is fresher
• The makers of things for newborn babies sell more things if they are pastel instead of bright, BUT bright colors are more popular if the child is a toddler
• People steal more red cars or trucks than any other color

So you see…color does matter

 

 

More than one feeling

If five people look at a bright red piece of paper, the feelings or emotions each person feels will not be the same. Some people will feel romantic and happy thoughts. Others will think tense or angry thoughts. But why? They are looking at the very same piece of paper, aren’t they?

Yes, they are. The difference of opinion is the result of many things including:

• Life experiences—if something bad happened to you when you were wearing a yellow shirt, you will likely not have good thoughts about the color yellow
• Exposure—the colors you are exposed to as a child help form your opinions
• Association—if you don’t like the taste of broccoli or green beans, green may not be your favorite color

 

 

Color psychology

Color psychology is the study of the different emotions (feelings) we get when we look at different colors.

Here are the results of many years of study:

Red – Love, romance, courage, anger, fear
Yellow – Joy, enthusiasm, sickness, worry, summer
Green – Greed, jealousy, freshness, decay, nature
Orange – Warmth, wisdom, age, action, aggression
Brown – Warmth, comfort, dirty, worn,
White – Clean, pure, fresh, babies, weddings
Blue – Comfort, warmth, integrity, honesty, peace, melancholy (sadness)
Pink – Love, happiness, babies, spring, friendship, girlishness
Black – Fear, anger, death, sophistication (fanciness), business, storms, strength
Purple – Money, wisdom, fantasy

As you can see, colors don’t mean the same thing to everyone.

What about you and your friends

This experiment is going to show you the different ways color affects people.

 

 

Here is what you need:

• A piece of paper for every color listed above
• 15 to 20 people
• Pen and paper

 

 

Try this

Repeat the experiment adding different shades of the colors (light blue, navy, lime green, lavender, bright red, dark red, etc.)

Show each person all shades of each color you have (all blues at one time, all browns, ect.)

How were the results different? Or were they?