6 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Color Perception

Believe it or not, factors such as language and culture can influence how individuals perceive color. Here are some interesting facts that perhaps you were not aware of before!

1. There seems to be a strong preference for the color white among people from Asian countries.

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Miho Saito’s study, “A Comparative Study of Color Preference in Japan, China and Indonesia, with emphasis on the preference for white,” looked at differences in color preferences in subjects from Japan, China, and Indonesia, and found that, although there were differences in color preferences among the three countries, in all three there was a strong preference for the color white. Among reasons for this preference, a common one was that white was associated with images of purity and cleanliness. From this study, then, it can be gathered that geographical and cultural proximity can affect preference for certain colors over others. A study by Taylor, Clifford, and Frankin found significant differences in color preferences between Himba and British participants, with Himba participants showing a low preference for bluish colors and British participants showing a strong preference for bluish hues, for example.

2. There are reasons to believe that children across different cultures who have not acquired color vocabulary yet begin to do so in a similar fashion.

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Roberson and colleagues conducted a longitudinal study in which they compared naming, comprehension, and memory for colors over the span of three years using two very different populations: Himba children whose language has 5 terms for color, and English children whose language uses 11 terms for color. Himba children come from an arid environment that is not in extensive contact with other cultures, while English children are from a temperate climate and are in constant contact with people from other regions. Even though these children come from completely different societies, they both acquired language for color terms slowly, there were individuals differences in acquisition of terms in both groups, and those who didn’t have language for color terms yet made similar errors in color perception tasks.

3. Different languages have unique categorizations for the blue-green colors, and these differences can influence people’s performance on color grouping tasks.

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Davies & Corbett’s study looked at differences in performance on a color-grouping task between subjects who spoke English, Russian, and Setswana. These languages have different amounts of basic color terms and they categorize the blue-green region of the color wheel differently. Setswana speakers only have a basic term for blue and green, while Russian speakers have two basic terms for the color blue. These differences translated to the subjects’ performance on color sorting tasks, with Setswana speakers being more likely than Russian and English speakers to group blue and green colors together. Roberson, Davies, and Davidoff (2000) also found that color terms differences in Berinmo and English influenced the way subjects who spoke these languages organized colors into categories. In one of many experiments in their study, the researchers found that it was easier for participants to divide colors into categories that already existed within their language. That is, English speakers learned to split colors into green and yellow faster than Berinmo speakers because they do not use terms equivalent to “green” and “yellow” when distinguishing colors from one another.

4. Differences in color preference between males and females follow similar patterns despite cultural differences.

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Sorokowski and Sorokowska’s research looked at differences in color preferences between an industrialized country, Poland, and a non-industrialized country, Papua. Although there were cultural differences in terms of color preferences, there was a high correlation (r=.93) between differences in color preference for Yali males and females and sex differences in color preference for Polish males and females. This research finding suggests that even in different cultures, male and female discrepancies in color preference are similar.

5. Association between colors and certain characteristics can influence people’s behavior and judgments.

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In their 1988 study, Frank & Gilovich used records from the NFL and NHL to investigate whether there was an association between a team wearing black and the number of penalties they received. They found that teams who wore black uniforms tended to have the most penalties in their league, and when a team switched from wearing a non-black uniform to wearing a black uniform, the number of penalties in the team tended to increase. Because black tends to be associated with evil, people might unconsciously judge those wearing black as possessing more malice, and wearing black could in turn influence someone’s behavior given this association. Laken’s (2011) study also found an association between color, particularly the national color of The Netherlands, orange, and person perception. It was found that people who were dressed in orange were perceived as identifying more with their country than were people who were wearing a different color, blue, demonstrating that meanings that have been embedded in certain colors can color perception of others.

6. People tend to associate certain colors with particular shapes and letters.

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In a study by Chen, Tanaka, Matsuyoshi, & Watanabe, researchers investigated whether Japanese participants showed biased associations between certain colors and shapes. It was found that circles and ovals tend to be associated with warmer colors, such as red, orange, and yellow, while trapezoid and hexagon shapes tend to be associated with cold colors, such as blue and green. The study “Color associations for days and letters across different languages,” looked at, among other things, whether there were tendencies to associate particular colors with letters among speakers of three different languages. Across Hindi, Dutch, and English speakers, there was a preference for pairing the color red with the letter A and the color blue with the letter B, for example.