Talk:Color psychology

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[edit] Linking the terms

Perhaps it would be nice to link the symbolized colours to their articles / definitions? This happens throughout the wikipedia with far more known words, so I reason a word like 'flamboyance' should be linked as well... Jeroen Stout 16:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

  • That's a really good idea. If no one else starts on it, I'll try to remember to get to it tonight. --Roman à clef 16:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yellow

More should be mentioned about the psychological affects of colors, rathern than what they commonly symbolize in some cultures. For example, instead of writing that yellow can represent cowardice, it should be mentioned that yellow often is a color used in fast-food restaurants as it could make a person "more hungry".

The above example is not something that I had made out of thin air; yellow does have a tendancy to provoke hunger, even if very little, in people. I suggest this be included in the article.

[edit] More on Yellow

While giving color theory classes in a visual communication course, i realized yellow was quite "weak" in comparison to other colors; people with anemia symptoms, for example, tend to acquire a yellowish tone in their skin. Thus, yellow would often be associated with weakness and illnesses. In this context, cowardice would be associated with yellow if a coward can be considered a person with a "weak character". In contrast, years after that, i noticed that a firm yellowish urine is a sign of good health, so i believe there is much to be said before yellow has an unique connotation.

[edit] Complimentary

It could be that it is the absense of blue ambient light (blue food generally being rotten), not the presence of yellow which is the cause.

[edit] Bias

There is an inherent bias in putting terms under a positive/negative column. For instance: suggesting conservatism is positive and radicalism is negativefffff. Perhaps you should have an ambigius/undetermined column.

  • This article needs some heavy cleanup, in any case. I'm going to try to attack it tonight. Thanks for the suggestion! --Roman à clef 16:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black and White

Most cultures associate white with purity, sanctity, wisdom, virginity, peace, all that is clean, sacred and untainted, where as black is associated with the opposite: Sin, darkness, dirtiness, the occult, oblivion, violence, etc. The process of associating colors with human emotions would then result in the fact that white would mean absolute joy and bliss, while black would mean total misery, an analogy of heaven and hell. These concepts are vastly exploited by popular art in many of its manifestations: Hard Rock and Metal bands often promote themselves with imagery where black prevails over other colors, so there is a sort of implicit coherence between the music and the colors chosen, including violet as a symbol of death. In contrast, a choir of gospel music sung by children would make little sense if they wore black robes. There is a misterious and fascinating coherence between colors, feelings and states of mind, and the best way to discover them is by playing with analogies.

[edit] Red

There was some article in discovery magazine where in competitions where contestants were randomly assigned either red or blue that red won 60% of the time in close matches JedG

  • Do you know when, approximately, this article was written? I'll dig around for it and try to include it in a citation if I can. --Roman à clef 16:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Oh, my word, does this page ever need some citation help. Do you folks out there have any idea where I might even get started in trying to find any kind of scholarly (or, heck, -any-) articles to cite, especially with the linking these colors with their respective "associations"? These things are way more contentious than one might initially suspect -- I mean, after all, who gets to decide which colors get associated with what and (like the anonymous contributor above) which associations are "bad" and "good"? --Roman à clef 16:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of sociology category

Catgeory has been removed. If anyone has any problems please come to Category_talk:Sociology and discuss. JenLouise 03:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page split

Someone already duplicated half the content of this page at Color Symbolism. I was going to just turn the page into a redirect back to here, but the duplicated content does seem to be the less "scientific" aspect of color psychology, so I propose that you remove the duplicated material from here instead, and just keep the "See also" link (that already exists). --Quiddity 00:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and did just that. --Quiddity 01:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)