Do you feel anxious in a yellow room? Does the color blue make you feel calm and relaxed? Artists and interior designers have long believed that color can dramatically affect moods, feelings, and emotions. "Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions," the artist Pablo Picasso once remarked.
Color is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and even influence physiological reactions. Certain colors have been associated with increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and eyestrain.
So how exactly does color work? How is color believed to impact mood and behavior?
light could be combined to form other colors. For example, red light mixed with yellow light creates an orange color. Some colors, such as green and magenta, cancel each other out when mixed and result in a white light.
If you have ever painted, then you have probably noticed how certain colors can be mixed to create other colors.
"Given the prevalence of color, one would expect color psychology to be a well-developed area," researchers Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier have noted. "Surprisingly, little theoretical or empirical work has been conducted to date on color's influence on psychological functioning, and the work that has been done has been driven mostly by practical concerns, not scientific rigor."
Despite the general lack of research in this area, the concept of color psychology has become a hot topic in marketing, art, design, and other areas. Much of the evidence in this emerging area is anecdotal at best, but researchers and experts have made a few important discoveries and observations about the psychology of color and the effect it has on moods, feelings, and behaviors.
As an undergraduate at Penn State University in 1975,I participated in studies conducted by John Flynn on the psychological effects of lighting. I was a test subject along with my other classmates. Later this work was expanded to the effects of color. I suggest you direct a research search using John Flynn as a key name. His graduate students and others expanded his work into the effects of color. The Illuminating Engineering Society is another source you can investigate. I believe you will find useful information following these two directions of investigation.
Best of luck!
The Luscher color personality test offers a potential solution to this question. Max Luscher was a Swiss psychotherapist who created a somewhat controversial ’color personality test’. The problem is that no sound scientific basis has been demonstrated for its personality predictions, but in-spite of this the Luscher Color Test is used in personality testing in up to 30 countries. The test is available on-line and it enables print-out diagnoses. It also ascribes attributes such was warm/cool strong/weak, depth of feeling, elasticity of will and spontaneity to individual colours.
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