Do colours have an impact on our daily lives?

What is Colour psychology? 

Colours make up an important part of our life as we observe and perceive different colours every day. In fact, there is a branch of psychology that focuses on how colours affect people's emotions, thoughts, and behaviours: Colour Psychology. There isn't much scientific evidence currently to support the idea that colours affect our bodies as, rather than focusing on the scientific side, studies have focused more on attracting attention in fields like marketing, fine art, and design. 

Examples of how colour psychology is used in daily life: 

-   Colour therapy (also known as chromotherapy) 

Colour and light are used in the treatment practice known as "colour therapy" to cure many physical and mental health issues. Every visible colour has a certain wavelength and frequency, which means it will have a varied impact on the patients. Evidence of this can be seen in Li-Chen Ou’s study (2010). He developed a semantic scale (warm/cool, heavy/light, active/passive, and like/dislike) to assess the colour emotion of a pair of colours that the experimenter provides.

He concluded that factors like gender, culture, age, and occupation (like a designer) influence the decision to like or dislike the colour. The outcomes for hot/cold, heavy/light, and active/passive are, nevertheless, the same. This suggests that everyone has the same or similar reaction to a particular colour, thus implying that the use of colour in therapy is possible. 

There is also an interesting spiritual explanation of colour psychology. Some people believe that each visible light has a different energy due to its difference in frequency and wavelength. As different parts of the body have distinct chakras (energy centres), each chakra is balanced with a corresponding colour. When everything is balanced, the body starts self-healing.

In my opinion, further empirical studies are required to completely demonstrate that colour psychology works. However, I do agree with the opinion that different colours have varying effects on our bodies, and the reason for it seems logical. However, I believe that for the spiritual explanation, it depends more on your religion and personal beliefs

-   Marketing and branding 

Companies utilise specific colours on their packaging because they believe that colour influences your thoughts and emotions. For example, The Seoul International Colour Expo Secretariat carried out an experiment and discovered that 93% of the participants made their purchasing decisions based on the product's packaging, with 85% saying that the colour of the packaging was a factor. According to a different survey, brand awareness and recall has increased to 80%. This suggests that colour packaging has affected all of us in our everyday life, whether we realise it or not, and companies use this trick to convince us to buy their products. 

An example of this is many people think that the colour green represents nature, peace, and development. As a result, many businesses utilise green to convey a positive and soothing message to their clients; Tic-tac and Starbucks are two examples. Additionally, agriculture brands employ green to convey to consumers that their products are natural and in-season. Red is yet another illustration. When people think of red, often power and violence are the first things that come to mind. Red is a popular colour used in energy beverages like Red Bull to draw in the attention of customers. Additionally, it gives off an impression of boosting energy because the colour red raises blood pressure and cell metabolism. 

What else have colours influenced? 

 - Taste

Several hundred researchers have looked at the effect of colour on scent, taste, and flavour. However, the majority of them are based on food that has been artificially coloured. Until recently, nearly all studies are based on the impact of colour on how colour affects people’s taste and flavour expectations. 

The colour of the drink is rarely linked to the taste of the instead, it is more often related to the product's brand. If the colour of the product is distinctive, customers will memorise the flavour of the product and link it to its particular colour. This process is called associative learning. This implies that very early in our development, we begin to associate colour, taste, and flavour (For example, red for an apple). It only happens if the event occurs repeatedly. (For instance, eating a lot of apples from a young age) 

Velasco et al. (2016) conducted an experiment to assess (with more than 5000 participants) the flavour associations generated by six coloured beverages. Regardless of where the participants were from, the findings showed that the drink's sweetest hue was red, closely followed by blue and finally purple. Green, yellow, and orange were rarely picked as colours that were linked with sweetness.

Personally, I need more scientific evidence to be persuaded that colour can affect the flavour as Velasco et al’s research results can be argued to be impacted by beverage brands rather than the beverage's colour itself. On the other hand, I do agree with the associative learning theory.

- Sports performance？ 

Many studies have been conducted to find correlations between sports performance and colour. Many people believe colour may affect a person's thoughts and feeling which will lead to a difference in the overall performance in sports. For example, blue was considered the "fastest colour" by speed skating teams. However, Renzo Shamey (professor of colour science) stated that blue not only suggests serenity and cooperation but it can also associate with depression and lack of motivation. This, therefore, suggests that blue is not beneficial in speed skating.

Hill and Barton conducted a study on the effect of colour on combat sports and found that red had a better success rate than blue as red seemed to communicate the opponent a message of aggression and authority. However, other studies argue that there is little difference. Another experimenter, Minnpost, argues that colour has an effect on the referee, not the opponent. He supported this notion with experiments of digital colour manipulation on an athletic race, in which referees were given photographs with contenders' clothes in which the colour had been adjusted. Generally, the referees gave more points to individuals who were photographed in red clothing than in blue.[5] 

In my opinion, colour psychology does influence sport performance as none of the colours will definitely guarantee an increase in sports performance. I believe it is mostly determined by the individual's own perspective (eg. unconscious motivation) and cultural upbringing. 

Reasons for this include: 

 1.   Natural environment 

The environment has a huge impact on our minds. For example, since most plants are green, the colour green represents nature and refreshment. Brown is the colour of soil, thus it represents security and simplicity. (To grow our food, we need soil). Red represents power and aggression since fires are red. 

2.   The Brain 

A study of the brain revealed that colour choice has an impact on brain activity in the posterior midline cortex, which also affects how we see the outside environment. 

3.   Evolution 

Colours like red tend to catch our attention more than others. This is because to find food or escape danger, our ancestors may have had to pay closer attention to certain colours. For example, blood is red, which may signify that a dangerous animal is nearby.

In my opinion, all of these reasons make sense and work. Natural environments and evolution theories are very similar. However, it can be countered that our parents or other personal influences taught us to be aware of certain colours instead of the evolutionary process. 

Closing Questions:

Do you agree with all the colour correlations and theories? What do you think can fully explain colour psychology? 

If you are interested in this, feel free to do more research on it. I have only provided a basic overview of colour psychology. However, keep in mind that further data and investigation are still required to thoroughly explain the causes of all the relationships.