Seeing life through positive-tinted glasses: color-meaning associations.

Sandrine Gil,Ludovic Le Bigot,Matthew Longo

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104291

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature to show that color can convey information, owing to its emotionally meaningful associations. Most research so far has focused on negative hue–meaning associations (e.g., red) with the exception of the positive aspects associated with green. We therefore set out to investigate the positive associations of two colors (i.e., green and pink), using an emotional facial expression recognition task in which colors provided the emotional contextual information for the face processing. In two experiments, green and pink backgrounds enhanced happy face recognition and impaired sad face recognition, compared with a control color (gray). Our findings therefore suggest that because green and pink both convey positive information, they facilitate the processing of emotionally congruent facial expressions (i.e., faces expressing happiness) and interfere with that of incongruent facial expressions (i.e., faces expressing sadness). Data also revealed a positive association for white. Results are discussed within the theoretical framework of emotional cue processing and color meaning.

Highlights

Colors carry information that goes far beyond esthetics, owing to their emotionally meaningful associations
As in Experiment 1, even happy faces prompted more emotion responses, this effect depended on color background: pink and white modulated the ability to discriminate emotional faces compared with gray (Figure 4)
Based on research showing that emotional contextual information can influence how humans process emotional faces [16,17], we set out to examine the impact of color as one such source of information

Summary

Introduction

Colors carry information that goes far beyond esthetics, owing to their emotionally meaningful associations. They can transcend their physical nature and take on a psychological meaning [1]. Emotional facial expressions provide critical cues in human interactions, as they convey information both on other people’s states and on the environment (e.g., [2,3,4]). The ability to understand these nonverbal communication cues allows humans to engage in harmonious interactions and implement adaptive behaviors. Psychology researchers have focused mainly on the human ability to understand these nonverbal messages, highlighting extremely efficient processes in adults that seem to be both automatic and effortless (e.g., [11,12,13,14])

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