I See Your True Colors

I See Your True Colors: The Effects of Color on the Perception of Emotions on Gist of Scenes

Antonio, Anne Bernadette S.

Chuahiong, Jade

Garcia, Christine Holly Y.

Hontiveros, Maria Melisa C.

Lasam, Von Carlo D.

Abstract

Color is a relevant feature in our environment and it has been associated with a number of things. A great deal of research has focused on associations of colors with emotions. Emotion is a complex series of events related with each other through certain ways (Plutchik, 2001). Results from color and emotion studies conducted lead to the conclusion that colors are associated with specific emotions (Groenholm, 2004; Yong, Sudirman, & Chew, 2012). However, color and emotion associations are not fixed and may vary depending on factors such as age, sex, and culture (Kaya & Epps, 2004; Saito, 1996). The perception of scenes are also explored in this study in such a way as to know whether people have the ability to perceive the gist of a scene despite having viewed the scene for only a very brief period of time (Fei-Fei, Iyer, Koch, & Perona, 2007). The goal of this study is to know whether colors have effects on the perception of emotions on the gist of neutral scenes. Eighty participants were shown two neutral scenes in increasing time duration and asked for the gist of the scene and the emotions the scene elicited. Results for the gist of the scenes showed that most participants had a common perception of the scene and salient features were noticed by all the participants. Results for color and emotional association showed that there was no significant difference between the perceived emotions of the neutral scenes whether they were filtered with emotionally-positive or negative colors.

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