Investigation on factors to influence color emotion and color preference responses

Abstract

Based on a psychophysical experiment, this study aimed to investigate factors that influenced color emotion and color preference, as well as the correlations between color emotion and color preference. Some color chips of Munsell color order system were picked out to supply actual patterns with different sets to evaluate the factors of hue, chroma, lightness, then they were pasted at a baseplate with black and white backgrounds respectively to involve the influences of backgrounds. Thus, in total 6 groups of color patches were prepared, and 18 attributes were chosen for visual assessment, including 16 words to describe color emotion, together with 2 color preference descriptions, so that massive data of observers’ judgments were gathered. Afterwards, a quantitative analysis and a detailed discussion were carried out for each attribute. Moreover, the calculation of Pearson correlation coefficients indicated that backgrounds could influence the perception of color emotion and color preference in a certain degree, and hue played a more important role than chroma and lightness. Further factor analysis revealed that color emotions do not exist in an isolated manner, and color preference could be represented in three orthogonal dimensions.