The IAT shows no evidence for Kandinsky's color-shape associations

Alexis D J Makin,Sophie M Wuerger

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00616

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, the Bauhaus revolutionized art and design by using simple colors and forms. Wassily Kandinsky was especially interested in the relationship of these two visual attributes and postulated a fundamental correspondence between color and form: yellow triangle, red square and blue circle. Subsequent empirical studies used preference judgments to test Kandinsky's original color-form combinations, usually yielding inconsistent results. We have set out to test the validity of these postulated associations by using the Implicit Association Test. Participants pressed one of two buttons on each trial. On some trials they classified shapes (e.g., circle or triangle). On interleaved trials they classified colors (e.g., blue or yellow). Response times should theoretically be faster when the button mapping follows Kandinsky's associations: For example, when the left key is used to report blue or circle and the right is used for yellow and triangle, than when the response mapping is the opposite of this (blue or triangle, yellow or circle). Our findings suggest that there is no implicit association between the original color-form combinations. Of the three combinations we tested, there was only a marginal effect in one case. It can be concluded that the IAT does not support Kandinsky's postulated color-form associations, and that these are probably not a universal property of the visual system.

Highlights

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the links between art and visual perception, with new specialized journals and conferences
Kandinsky produced increasingly abstract images, and for a period from 1922–1933 he taught at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany, which celebrated simple colors and forms
One of Kandinsky’s ideas was that there are certain fundamental associations between colors and shapes (Kandinsky, 1912): he proposed Yellow-Triangle, Blue-Circle, and Red-Square. These associations were formulated introspectively, he did conduct his own survey at the Bauhaus in 1923 by distributing questionnaires to his professorial colleagues and students, and found that many of his colleagues agreed with his associations; notable exceptions were his contemporaries, Klee and Schlemmer, who favored different form-color combinations (Duechting, 1996)

Summary

Introduction

There has been a growing interest in the links between art and visual perception, with new specialized journals and conferences. Kandinsky (1866–1944) was an influential Russian painter As his career progressed, Kandinsky produced increasingly abstract images, and for a period from 1922–1933 he taught at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany, which celebrated simple colors and forms. One of Kandinsky’s ideas was that there are certain fundamental associations between colors and shapes (Kandinsky, 1912): he proposed Yellow-Triangle, Blue-Circle, and Red-Square. These associations were formulated introspectively, he did conduct his own survey at the Bauhaus in 1923 by distributing questionnaires to his professorial colleagues and students, and found that many of his colleagues agreed with his associations; notable exceptions were his contemporaries, Klee and Schlemmer, who favored different form-color combinations (Duechting, 1996). Kandinsky had already embarked upon a similar attempt to identify color form associations while still in Russia with the aim to provide the scientific underpinning for his own intuitions (Poling, 1984)

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Results

Conclusion