Effects of Face and Background Color on Facial Expression Perception

Abstract

Detecting others’ emotional states from their faces is an essential component of successful social interaction. However, the ability to perceive emotional expressions is reported to be modulated by a number of factors. We have previously found that facial color modulates the judgment of facial expression, while another study has shown that background color plays a modulatory role. Therefore, in this study, we directly compared the effects of face and background color on facial expression judgment within a single experiment. Fear-to-anger morphed faces were presented in face and background color conditions. Our results showed that judgments of facial expressions was influenced by both face and background color. However, facial color effects were significantly greater than background color effects, although the color saturation of faces was lower compared to background colors. These results suggest that facial color is intimately related to the judgment of facial expression, over and above the influence of simple color.

Red color facilitates the detection of facial anger — But how much?

“…According to this well-known color context effect, the red background should induce a greenish tinge into the neutral face and thus decrease the perceived redness of the face, presumably decreasing, rather than enhancing, perceived anger. Our result goes against this prediction and complements previous reports of a facilitatory effect of a red background on reaction times [24], biases for ambiguous expressions [25], or shifts in a category boundary between two emotions [19].…”

“…Previously, Minami and colleagues [17, 19] studied the effect of red on emotion perception in a setup similar to ours. They showed that red facial color shifts the category boundary on a fear-anger continuum away from anger, thus increasing the probability of reported anger.…”

“…We did not find any significant difference between the magnitudes of the two effects, although there was a tendency for the background color effect to be slightly larger. Minami et al [19] found the opposite: facial color exerted a larger effect on emotion perception than background color. It appears, on the basis of previous studies [15] and the trend in our data, that the magnitude of the effects may depend on the stimulus parameters; particularly, on the saturation of the colors.…”

“…For instance, facial redness increases the proportion of angry responses to neutral faces [14] and the rated anger of synthetic male faces [15]. Facial redness might also affect category boundaries between anger and other emotions, such as anger and fear ([17, 19]; although see [14]).…”

Promoting effects of color‐text congruence in banner advertising

“…To some extent, abstract meanings might be determined by concrete meanings, such as some abstract color-emotion associations might be developed from concrete facial color-emotion cooccurrences. 31 For example, when one sees a man in a red shirt, the color red can be associated with blood from a fight, implying aggression and facilitating competition. 32 Alternatively, the color red can also be associated with blood oxygenation under the skin, implying health and facilitating perceived attractiveness.…”