Synesthetic Colors Associated with Personality

Abstract

DR experiences a rare form of synesthesia in which the sight of people simultaneously induces colors. We evaluated her conviction that her synesthetic ‘people-colors’ are stable and associated with personality. In Study 1, DR briefly viewed each of 10 strangers through a half-silvered mirror, in silence, over two sessions. In Study 2, DR could both see and talk briefly to each of 12 new strangers, over three sessions. For each stranger, DR described her synesthetic colors and filled out a ten-item personality inventory (TIPI) based upon them. She provided consistent synesthetic colors/personality ratings across sessions. Still, her initial person-colors did change with further exposure, for the dimension of personality that she identified most accurately, namely, Extraversion. The correlations of DR's colors with the subjects’ Extraversion (as coded from the TIPI self-reports) rose from low-moderate in Study 1 to r = .74 in Study 2, but were weak (r < .03) for the remaining four personality dimensions. We conclude that experiential learning can affect synesthesia, not only for color-word associations, but also for person-colors.