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Part of
Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language and beyond
Edited by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam and Galina V. Paramei
[Not in series 217] 2018
► pp. 209–222

Chapter 11
Unifying research on colour and emotion

Time for a cross-cultural survey on emotion associations with colour terms

| University of Lausanne, Switzerland
| University of Lausanne, Switzerland
| University of Lausanne, Switzerland
| Tallinn University, Estonia
| University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Popular opinions link colours and emotions. Yet, affective connotations of colours are heterogeneous (for example, red represents anger and love) partly because they relate to different contexts. Despite insufficient evidence, colours are used in applied settings (health, marketing, and others) for their supposed effects on cognitive and affective functioning. Summarizing the literature, we recommend systematic research to investigate when and how colours link with affective phenomena. We need to: (1) distinguish between situations in which colours are either physically shown or linguistically treated; (2) specify types of affective processes (for example, emotion, mood, preference); and (3) investigate cross-cultural differences. Having these needs in mind, we initiated an international online survey on semantic colour-emotion associations. We outline theoretical considerations and present the survey’s design.

Keywords: emotion, colour, online survey, cross-cultural, semantic associations
Article outline
  • 1.Understanding colour choices in applied contexts: Linking to cognitive-affective functioning
  • 2.Unifying research on colour and emotion psychology
    • 2.1Exposure to physical versus linguistic colour representations
    • 2.2Operationalization in the affective sciences
    • 2.3Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences
  • 3.Description of the international colour-emotion association survey
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.11moh
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