Left and right
retinas of a mouse,
in which the X
chromosome for
each parent is
tagged with red
or green GFPs.
Image credit: Hao
Wu and Jeremy
Nathans, Johns
Hopkins University/Cell Press.
family?), the way colors make us feel, how
they affect our actions, and why, is much
more elusive because it inherently mixes in
nature with the unpredictable, ungeneralizable
nurture.
Color psychology is the field that deals
with the effect of color on human behavior.
Goethe was the first to analyze the effect of
color on the human condition in his work,
“Theory of Colors,” published first in 1810,
in which he separated colors into “plus” and
“minus” categories associated with positive
and negative feelings. Kurt Goldstein, a
psychiatrist practicing in the mid 20th century,
continued the ideas of Goethe and integrated
his experiences in clinical psychology, proposing
that color could have a direct effect on
physiology leading to an induced emotional
state. Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier (of the
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences at
the University of Rocester, and the Department
of Psychology at the University of Munich,
respectively) discuss the current state of color
psychology research in great depth in their 2013
paper “Color Psychology: Effects of Perceiving
Color on Psychological Functioning in
Humans.” Outlining the issues facing this field,
they discuss the problematic methodologies
of many color psychology studies, which often
overlook the various dimensions of saturation
(the “richness” of a color) and luminance
6
(sometimes referred to “value," the “lightness”
of a color), only dealing with hue (the color of
a color). At heart, however, is the question of
context, and Elliot and Maier cite a number
of studies that have attempted to understand
the relationship between context and color.
Many of these studies focused on the color red,
the most complicated of all. Indeed, the color
which symbolizes both life and death, red is
associated with the widest variety of emotional
states including fear, lust, anger, aggression,
competitiveness, attraction, attractiveness…
the list goes on. The research is mixed, so
one must exercise restraint in drawing any
specific conclusions. That being said, however,
it is inarguably true that the effect of color is
dependent not only on the context of the world
it is in, but the context of the personal taste of
whoever is experiencing it.
But no matter what a person’s nurture-derived
context consists of, there are generalities to
be made, and this is likely due to evolutionary
factors, which we can have fun making up
just-so stories for but may never be able to pin
down. This is evidenced in the work of Komar
& Melamid, who created the “Most Wanted
Paintings" for 14 countries, based on survey
data acquired from citizens of each. Save one
country, the “Most Wanted” paintings look
remarkably similar in composition, color choice
and content. Regardless of the native terrain of
SciArt in America February 2014