Analysis of the Effect of Different Types of Colors on Human Behavior and Emotion

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Analysis of the Effect of Different Types of Colors on
Human Behavior and Emotion
Jueying Lyu
Shanghai Qibaodwight High School, Shanghai, China, 999001
ljy18913199571@163.com
ABSTRACT
Color is an important part of everyday life, and people often use color to represent a mood or an emotional
characteristic. Studies have shown that it can affect people's emotions. The purpose of this article is to discuss whether
color can be used to treat psychiatric problems based on its effect on humans. Therefore, this article compares the
related articles and the ideas in the articles through the method of literature review, and discusses the application of
color in psychotherapy. The conclusion is that color may be helpful in the treatment of mental illness. However, due
to the influence of personal experience and life, different colors have different meanings to different people, so the
problem of mental illness cannot be well solved by color therapy.
Keywords: Colors, Human behavior, Human emotion, Psychology
1. INTRODUCTION
It becomes more common for the teenagers to have
mental problems since a large amount of stress of
studying and competition. The China national mental
health development report (2019-2020) says that the
percentage of the teenagers who have mental problem
such as depression is 24.6% [1]. However, not all
families believe that their children are having mental
problems,such as depression. They think their children
feel upset and stressed out is just because they are too
impressible. Color is one of the most common things in
our daily life. Since Color affects human’ s emotions by
different wavelengths. Since people see color through
the eyes and we will imagine what we saw before
according to this color. For example, blue may help us
think of the sky or the sea, so we feel calm and peaceful.
It is also related to our conarial and retina. Color works
through human vision. The wavelengths of light emitted
by different colors are different. When human eyes are
exposed to different colors, the association and response
of brain nerves are also different. Different colors can
affect people's endocrine system through vision,
resulting in the increase or decrease of human hormones
and the change of people's moods. So, can color help
cure the mental problem among teenagers?
There are lots of researches about the colors, this
article aims to gathering past papers and find out how
different color affect human emotions and discuss can
these color be used in curing mental problems among
the teenagers.
2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Color psychology is a part of psychology that always
affect us in our daily life. In 1666, English scientist Sir
Isaac Newton discovered that when pure white light
passes through a prism, it separates into all of the visible
colors. Newton also found that each color is made up of
a single wavelength and cannot be separated any further
into other colors. [2]. Many years later researchers
found something further about the color psychology.
Some further experiments show people something about
combining different color to get another color. These
may sounds very normal for now, but color of light is
actually developing step by step. The mystery of light is
being explored and the unexplored part is reducing.
Light as an important part in our daily life, it shows us
the wonderful world.
"Given the prevalence of color, one would expect
color psychology to be a well-developed area,"[3] Color
psychology is based one the light which show the color
in our eyes. However, 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
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Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Mental Health, Education and Human Development (MHEHD 2022)
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
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about the psychology of color and the effect it has on
moods, feelings, and behaviors. [2]
3. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
The experiment done by Doris Jeanette named How
colors affect emotions[4]. It discussed why the color
affect human emotion. It says that color and emotion
have certain wavelength which both of them are
physically exist. Since both of them are exist in the way
of wave, they can affect each other. This article include
7 parts about why we feel emotion from color and how.
3.1. Importance of flow
The first part is called the Importance of flow. It
compares the stop of water with our body. When people
stop the natural movement of anything, it creates an
environment where mental, emotional, or physical
diseases can flourish. It is no surprise that the major
aspect of themselves that human has inhibited is their
emotions. People have been conditioned to deny and
depress their feelings from the moment of birth [4].
From the comparison, it can be understood that people
always restrain their emotions either to show
reassurance or protect themselves. And every day more
research studies document what sensitive people have
always known, that emotions directly affect physical
and mental states of being. DeSteno and J.Cross (2013)
mentioned that it will be healthier to regulate our
emotions properly instead of restraining them [5].
As a result, the conclusion is that emotions are
literally energy in motion. They are supposed to move,
they must flow in order to maintain a healthy physical
environment. The writer provides an example of Greek
women [5]. The writer thinks that if the Greek women
are encouraged to express their emotions instead of
being forced to wear black every day, they may feel
better instead of always feeling sad, upset, or even feel
hopeless. In this case, color has a huge effect on
emotion, and looking at a negative color for a long time
may cause a serious effect on mental health and even
cause a mental problem. Therefore, since the color may
cause mental problems, it can fix mental problems and
keep people positive emotions.
All the colors can affect people’s emotions and it is a
long-term effect on the emotion change [6]. It proves
that all colors affect the emotion and can help to keep an
emotion that is either positive or negative.
3.2. Emotions are colors
The second part is about the relationship between
color and emotion called emotions are colors. many
researchers have elaborated on the relationship between
emotion and color in their articles. Compare with the
article: How colors affect emotions: the effect of colors
and color combinations on the moods of humans by
Leon Miguel G.Gonzales [6] and Cherry (2020) [2]
conclude that different colors really have a different
effect on human emotions. However, the three articles
focus on different perspectives. The opinion of Jeanette
(2004) is that Colors and emotions are inseparable
because they are the same sort of energy [4]. Physically,
people's emotions are composed of colors. People who
can see the energy field actually perceive emotions as
different colors. The colors these people see are actually
puffy and little clouds of colors floating in the air
around the person's body. These mists of "colored balls"
and "colored clouds" generally hang out like mist in the
so-called emotional bodies in the energy field, and these
emotional bodies existed about a foot and a half away
from people's physical bodies. Cherry (2020) focuses on
blue only [2]. Blue is a cold color that usually represents
the sky or sea in the mind. So, when people see these
colors, they may first think of the sea or sky and have a
sense of calm and peace. So, blue is a favorite color of
many people. Since blue is a favorite color of many
people, it is seen as a non-threatening color. However,
blue also makes people feel sad and aloofness.
A painting that is painted with nearly all blue makes
people feel uncomfortable and depressed. This article
also mentioned that blue is usually used to decorate
offices since it makes people productive. The opinion of
Leon Miguel G.Gonzales is that color is a visual
experience when combining different colors together [6].
It is like combining the attraction of red and the joy of
the yellow, the orange will make people tend to lose
time and forget problems, and only feel happy and enjoy.
So, the three articles combinate of colors and the
representative of wavelength, to show that color can
affects emotion and helps people to solve emotional
problems in daily life.
3.3. Vibrant moment
The third part is called the vibrant moment. It
discusses colors, sounds, and emotions are all vibrations,
they can be physically felt in the body. The body is like
a tuning fork, picking up the frequency of the colors and
emotions inside and outside of people. Even if are not
aware of them, people are still affected by the energy
which physically appears in the body, just like sounds.
However, colors are part of the human being, like all
emotions, so people cannot lose any one of them. People
can maintain positive emotions most of the time, but
negative emotions are also unavoidable. Therefore,
different emotions are generated at different times, and
different colors are required at different times. Staying
in a room with only one color for a long time may also
trigger other psychological problems. From the
perspective of art, the arts will contain multiple colors,
and these different colors make it beautiful and express
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rich emotions. Therefore, people also need a variety of
colors to enrich their lives.
3.4. How to judge color
The fourth part claims value judgment which is the
method to judge the color. Different colors have
different wavelengths in visual experience and give
different feelings. Red is the color of action, the root
chakra. Some people think that red is the color that only
attracts others’ attention, so people who wear red only
want to attract others’ attention. However, it is a
stereotype of red. Red is the intensity of energy that is
connected to the deepest and strongest desires. Another
extreme example is in the Seeing red, disgust reactions
to gruesome photographs in color (but not in black and
white) increase convictions. Salerno (2017) compares
the photo of the murder case printed in black and white
with printed colorfully with an effective mechanism[8].
The participants randomly get the photo in either black
and white or colorful. The result shows that colorful
photos are more terrible which makes people have
deeper and stronger emotions of scaring and anger.
From these examples, it can be known that color plays
an important role to deepen our emotions. If people only
see black and white color then, may be so boring to
observe the world with only little emotion.
3.5. Different color with different emotion
The fifth part is called color information, which is
about the information that different colors have different
feelings for people. In the reagent, red light has the
longest wavelength and violet light has the shortest
wavelength. In my opinion, it also depends on the
density of light. Many articles mention the meaning of
each color, for example, white represents purity, blue
represents peace, and yellow represents joy. However,
people need to remember that the meaning of what is
happening is also constantly shifting. Physical
vibrations and emotional vibrations are of course real,
but the interruptions of what they mean at any point in
time can be down right wrong. So be careful not to use
other people's definitions and place them on your own
emotions or colors. This opinion is quite the opposite of
many other psychologists. Gilbert, Fridlund & Lucchina
(2016) describe another method that can explain the
information that each color has [9]. The researchers
conducted an experiment in which 194 participants were
required to touch a screen for color matching. The
machine then forms 20 words about emotion based on
the color. During the matching process, the researchers
found that their matches were influenced by age and
gender. This experiment N was used to observe the
connection between food, drink and color. At the same
time, this experiment also proved that color and mood
are closely related, but may be affected by age.
Therefore, information about color is uncertain and
many factors affect it.
3.6. Factors
The sixth part is to describe the means of earth color
which is about different colors may have different
meanings in different situations. The author's point is
that the density of the color and the location of the color
also affect the information about the color. For example,
dark red and light red gives different information too.
Also, the amount of red in different locations and the
degree to which is covered by red affects the thoughts
that viewers have. During the creation of arts, it is also
mentioned that to create art works which make the
audience feel comfortable, they use color in different
percentages to create a beautiful art work. It shows that
the different locations and different color matches also
create different feelings and emotions for other people
[11].
3.7. Sounds
The seventh part is sound, which seems not related
to the topic of color, but actually, sounds and color are
related. In the author’s opinion, the sound is also a
strong vibration. As sound and color are both
wavelengths, sounds also affect emotions. In working
memory model, it divided the process of memorize into
three parts, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad,
and central executive.
Cornad and Hull (1964) finish an experiment and
claim the working memory model shows that the the
phonological similarity effect has an effect on
memorizing [13]. In this experiment, the two groups of
participants one is required to see a list of letters sounds
similar, the other one is required to see a list of letters
sounds differently. After seeing the letters, they are
required to recall all the letters. The result shows that
the phonologically similar letters makes participants
feeling confused easier than the not similar ones. It
shows that although the participants see the letters, they
still use sounds to remember to letters.
It can still be related to the color and sounds. Like
when seeing a color, people might think them as a sound
and produce emotion about it.
4. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, color does have an effect on people's
mood, it can help with some mental issues and cheer up
patients when they feel dressed and upset. Emotions
need to be expressed, not restrained. Color affects
people in many ways, including psychology,
decision-making, and thinking. There seems to be color
everywhere. To answer the question that the author
asked in the introduction, if use color in a correct way,
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it can be used to cheer up and help regulate emotions.
Some colors in the room to use as a background can also
help participants feel better. However, because different
people feel different even when they see the same color,
based on their different past experiences and ages,
psychologists do not know which color is more suitable
for patients to help them with psychological problems.
Therefore, color may be less suitable for the treatment
of mental problems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Firstly, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to
my teachers and professors in my university, who have
provided me with valuable guidance in every stage of
the writing of this thesis.
Further, I would like to thank all my friends and
parents for their encouragement and support. Without all
their enlightening instruction and impressive kindness, I
could not have completed my thesis
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