Emotion-color associations in the context of the face.

Abstract

Facial expressions of emotion contain important information that is perceived and used by observers to understand others' emotional state. While there has been considerable research into perceptions of facial musculature and emotion, less work has been conducted to understand perceptions of facial coloration and emotion. The current research examined emotion-color associations in the context of the face. Across four experiments, participants were asked to manipulate the color of face, or shape, stimuli along two color axes (i.e., red-green, yellow-blue) for six target emotions (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise). The results yielded a pattern that is consistent with physiological and psychological models of emotion.Keywords: Emotion, Color, Face, Association EMOTION-COLOR ASSOCIATIONS 3Outward expressions of emotion convey information about an individual's internal physiological and psychological state. Perceptual expectations regarding emotion are generated and reinforced through continued interactions with others. Specifically, perceivable characteristics of emotion are detected and stored as information, which is later used to effectively predict and understand others' emotion (Jack, Garrod, & Schyns, 2013;Yuille & Kersten, 2006). These expectations therefore reflect deeply engrained emotion-perception associations. By studying these associations, we can understand how emotion information is transmitted and interpreted as social information.An important, yet understudied property of emotion expression is facial coloration. While a substantial amount of research on emotion expression has been dedicated to investigating facial musculature (Ekman, 1993), very little empirical work has been conducted to examine the role of facial coloration changes in emotion communication. However, facial coloration reflects physiological and psychological processes that are biologically and socially relevant. For example, facial color has been shown to influence perceptions of health (Stephen, Coetzee, Law Smith, & Perrett, 2009;Young, Thorstenson, & Pazda, 2016), attractiveness (Jones, Little, Burt, & Perrett, 2004;Thorstenson, Pazda, Elliot, & Perrett, 2016), and personality (Stephen, Oldham, Perrett, & Barton, 2012). Further, because the expression of emotion cues is an important component of emotion communication (Keltner & Haidt, 1999), we should expect to find cognitive and perceptual mechanisms that facilitate detecting such cues to emotion in others (Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006). In line with this, there is evidence that trichromatic color vision in humans is well suited, even optimized, for detecting subtle skin color changes resulting from physiological processes (Changizi, Zhang, & Shimojo, 2006; Lefevre, Ewbank, Calder, EMOTION-COLOR ASSOCIATIONS 4Hagen, & Perrett, 2013;Re, Whitehead, Xiao, & Perrett, 2011;Tan & Stephen, 2013). This suggests that skin color plays an important role in social communication. The current research aims to investigate observers' emotion-color associatio...

Modulation of visual attention assessed using the Stroop task during the menstrual cycle: Comparison between the menstrual and ovulation phases

“…Some studies also reported that emotional facial expressions could be associated with specific colours, and thus, we are likely to imagine facial expressions with particular colours. For instance, participants were more likely to relate a happy face with colours such as yellow, a sad face with blue, and an angry face with red . Sutton and Altarriba examined 160 emotional words with both positive and negative meanings, and interestingly, the majority of participants tended to associate colours with specific emotional words .…”

“…In these graphs, bars indicate the colour of each stimulus: white bar for red, gray bar for yellow, and black-dotted bar for blue happy face with colours such as yellow, a sad face with blue, and an angry face with red. [36][37][38] Sutton and Altarriba examined 160 emotional words with both positive and negative meanings, and interestingly, the majority of participants tended to associate colours with specific emotional words. 38 Children aged 7 to 8 years old also seemed to categorize specific colours into either happy or unhappy emotions, although gender differences in categorization were observed.…”

“…Several studies used this task to examine emotional interference using emotional words such as war and abuse and showed that participants who have high anxiety sensitivity tend to respond to words related to anxiety more than to any other words. [33][34][35] Emotional facial expressions or emotional words might often be associated with specific colours (eg, a happy face with yellow or a sad face with blue), [36][37][38] although the studies that found such an association mainly focused on university students as participants, and the association with different background factors such as age, gender, and culture might be unclear. However, interaction between emotional facial expressions and colours in the Stroop task has not been well examined.…”

“…Emotional facial expressions or emotional words might often be associated with specific colours (eg, a happy face with yellow or a sad face with blue), although the studies that found such an association mainly focused on university students as participants, and the association with different background factors such as age, gender, and culture might be unclear. However, interaction between emotional facial expressions and colours in the Stroop task has not been well examined.…”

Promoting effects of color‐text congruence in banner advertising

“…We propose that color stimuli are associated with both objects (concrete meanings) and concepts (abstract meanings) before they influence more downstream psychological processes, such as attention and preference. 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 co‐occurrences . 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 .…”