Abstract
The claim that favourite colours reveal individuals’ personalities is popular in the media yet lacks scientific support. We assessed this claim in two stages. First, we catalogued claims from six popular websites, and matched them to key Big Six/HEXACO trait terms, ultimately identifying 11 specific, systematic, testable predictions (e.g., higher Extraversion among those who prefer red, orange, yellow, pink, or turquoise). Next, we tested these predictions in terms of the Big Six personality trait scores and reports of favourite and least favourite colours from 323 French-speaking participants. For every prediction (e.g., red-extraversion), we compared trait scores between participants who chose or did not choose the predicted colour using Welch’s t-tests. We failed to confirm any of the 11 predictions. Further exploratory analyses (MANOVA) revealed no associations between colour preferences and personality trait. Favourite colours appear unrelated to personality, failing to support the practical utility of colour-based personality assessment.
Highlights
We catalogued claims from six popular websites, and matched them to key Big Six/HEXACO trait terms, identifying 11 specific, systematic, testable predictions. We tested these predictions in terms of the Big Six personality trait scores and reports of favourite and least favourite colours from 323 Frenchspeaking participants
Further exploratory analyses revealed no reliable associations between any colour preferences and any personality traits. What do these findings mean? Our findings indicate that favourite colours are unrelated to personality, at least as captured by reliable and valid trait models, the Big Five and the Big Six/HEXACO models
While our results indicated a lack of systematic association for favourite colours in predicting Big Six personality traits, future work might discover other ways that colour choices indicate individual differences
Summary
The goals of the study were three: 1) to create a more direct dialogue between popular media claims and personality science; 2) to refine and propose a lexical methodology that can be used to test this as well as other popular-culture claims about personality; and 3) to inform colour researchers and the public about whether there is any truth to colour preferences predicting personality traits.
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