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Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity

Domicele Jonauskaite¹; Ahmad Abu-Akel¹; Nele Dael^1,2; Daniel Oberfeld³; Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek⁴; Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed⁵; Jean-Philippe Antonietti¹; Victoria Bogushevskaya⁶; Amer Chamseddine⁷; Eka Chkonia⁸; Violeta Corona^9,10; Eduardo Fonseca-Pedrero¹¹; Yulia A. Griber¹²; Gina Grimshaw¹³; Aya Ahmed Hasan⁴; Jelena Havelka¹⁴; Marco Hirnstein¹⁵; Bodil S. A. Karlsson¹⁶; Eric Laurent^17,18; Marjaana Lindeman¹⁹; Lynn Marquardt¹⁵; Philip Mefoh²⁰; Marietta Papadatou-Pastou^21,22; Alicia Pérez-Albéniz¹¹; Niloufar Pouyan¹; Maya Roinishvili²³; Lyudmyla Romanyuk^24,25,26; Alejandro Salgado Montejo^27,28,29; Yann Schrag¹; Aygun Sultanova³⁰; Mari Uusküla³¹; Suvi Vainio³²; Grażyna Wąsowicz³³; Sunčica Zdravković^34,35; Meng Zhang³⁶; Christine Mohr¹

¹ Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne · ² Department of Organizational Behavior, University of Lausanne · ³ Institute of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz · ⁴ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University · ⁵ Department of Psychology, King Saud University · ⁶ Department of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart · ⁷ School of Computer and Communication Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne · ⁸ Department of Psychiatry, Tbilisi State Medical University · ⁹ Escuela de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Panamericana · ¹⁰ Business Management Department, Universitat Politècnica de València · ¹¹ Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja · ¹² Department of Sociology and Philosophy, Smolensk State University · ¹³ School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington · ¹⁴ School of Psychology, University of Leeds · ¹⁵ Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen · ¹⁶ Division of Built Environment, Research Institutes of Sweden AB, Gothenburg, Sweden · ¹⁷ Laboratory of Psychology, University Bourgogne Franche–Comté · ¹⁸ Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de l’Environnement, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and University of Franche-Comté · ¹⁹ Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki · ²⁰ Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria · ²¹ School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens · ²² Biomedical Research Foundation (BRFaa), Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece · ²³ Laboratory of Vision Physiology, I. Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine, T’bilisi, Georgia · ²⁴ Faculty of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv · ²⁵ Department of Psychology, V. I. Vernadsky Taurida National University · ²⁶ Department of Psychology, Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts · ²⁷ Escuela Internacional de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad de La Sabana · ²⁸ Center for Multisensory Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School · ²⁹ Neurosketch, Bogotá, Colombia · ³⁰ National Mental Health Centre, Ministry of Health, Baku, Azerbaijan · ³¹ School of Humanities, Tallinn University · ³² Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki · ³³ Department of Economic Psychology, Kozminski University · ³⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Novi Sad · ³⁵ Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, University of Belgrade · ³⁶ Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University

Many of us “see red,” “feel blue,” or “turn green with envy.” Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient r = .88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design.

DOI

10.1177/0956797620948810

Volume

31 (10)

Pages

1245-1260

Language

en

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