Question

Based on the article pasted below please answer the following questions:

1. The purpose of the article or problem statement
2. A brief summary of the literature review
3. What are the research questions or hypotheses relevant to "How color affects one's mood"?
4. A basic description of the design/methodology of the research study (if applicable)
5. A report of the findings of the article, and,
6. the value or use of the article in relation to a research project that has to do with " How color affects one's mood"?   

COLORS HAVE A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT on peoples' lives. For example, color plays an important role in self-presentation and in impression formation. People choose the color of their clothes, their cars, and even their sport shoes, depending on how they wish to present themselves (Trinkaus, 1991).

Most research related to color is concerned with color preferences. Personality traits, such as extroversion and neuroticism, have been shown to influence color preference (Choungourian, 1972). There are also many studies that are concerned with color preference in relation to skin color and color preference based on cultural variation (Choungourian, 1968). Studies have also been devoted to the methodology for researching color preference (Zold, Toth, & Tolna, 1986).

Researchers have examined how colors affect mood. Lawler and Lawler (1965, cited in Boyatzis & Varghese, 1994) found that children "colored with a yellow crayon after hearing a happy story and with a brown crayon after hearing a sad story." Clearly there is a close link between colors and emotions.

However, few studies have focused on color-emotion associations. Birren and Sharp (1974, 1978, cited in Boyatzis & Varghese, 1994) showed that colors do appear to elicit certain emotional responses. The color red has been associated with aggression and excitation, green has been associated with withdrawal, and black has been associated with anxiety.

More recently, Boyatzis and Varghese (1994) studied children's color-emotion associations. They found that children displayed distinct color-emotion associations for nine different colors. One finding indicated that children tended to associate positive emotions with light colors, such as blue and yellow, and negative emotions with dark colors, such as black and gray.

My purposes in this study were to examine adults' color-emotion associations and compare them with the conclusions of the study by Boyatzis and Varghese (1994).

Method

Participants The participants were 40 undergraduate students from the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. They were divided equally into two groups, one consisting of 20 women and the other of 20 men. The participants were mainly Caucasian and middle class.

Materials and Procedure

Colored cardboard rectangles (10 cm by 12 cm) were used to present the 10 different colors (white, pink, red, yellow, blue, purple, green, brown, black, and gray). The participants completed the questionnaire individually, at their own pace, following instructions given on the front of the questionnaire. The participants were asked to list their favorite color, the major color they were wearing, and their Render.

The participants were then required to place the card that most resembled their favorite color at the top of the deck of colored cards. They were then asked to respond to questions for each color: "What emotional response do you associate with this colour? How does this colour make you feel?" and "Why do you feel this way?" The participants were required to list which particular color they were responding to as they filled in the questionnaire.

Each deck of colored cards was shuffled for at least I min after each use, in order to ensure random presentation of colors. After they had completed the questionnaire, the participants were thanked, and their questions regarding the study were answered. Results

Overall, 49% of the participants expressed positive responses to colors, 36% expressed negative responses, and 15% expressed no emotion.

Fifty-three percent of the men and 55% of the women cited blue as their favorite color. Other favorite colors for the men were black, brown, green, and red. Other favorite colors for women were orange, yellow, purple, green, and red. Forty-six percent of the men were wearing blue as their major color, 20% were wearing black, and 20% gray. Other colors they wore were white and brown.

The major colors being worn by the women were very similar. Forty-five percent were wearing blue as their major color, 10% black, and 25% green. The women showed more variety in their color choices than the men did; other colors they were wearing were purple, red, white, and gray. A high percentage of respondents were wearing their favorite color (40% of the men, and 45% of the women).

Responses to individual colors were very similar for the men and women. Brighter colors elicited more positive responses than darker colors. Bright colors included white, pink, red, yellow, blue, purple, and green. Dark colors included brown, black, and gray. Positive responses related to four categories: happy, excited, relaxed, and positive. Negative responses also related to four categories: anxious, boring, sad, and negative. There was also a category for those responses that indicated no emotional response.

Overall, 61% of the responses to bright colors were positive, compared with only 21% for dark colors (see Table 1). Only 25% of the responses to bright colors were negative, whereas 63% of the responses were negative for dark colors. The responses that indicated that the color did not elicit any emotions at all were approximately equal for bright and dark colors: 14% and 16%, respectively. The women responded more positively to bright colors by a margin of 14%, and they also responded more negatively to dark colors by a margin of 8%.

On 25% of the responses, the men indicated that they had no emotional response to bright colors. The women appeared to be more emotionally oriented, reporting no emotional response only 6% of the time.

(IMAGE AND TABLE NOT ABLE TO BE PASTED HERE) Enlarge this image.

TABLE 1

The men (27%) also tended to feel more positively toward dark colors than the women did (17%; see Figure 1). Blue elicited the highest number of positive responses, closely followed by green and red. Blue also elicited the lowest number of negative and no-emotion responses. The women were far more positive toward purple than the men were. Purple and white elicited the highest total number of noemotion responses for the men and high no-emotion responses for the women.

Surprisingly, gray rather than black evoked the highest number of negative responses. Gray also elicited the lowest number of positive responses. Negative responses for the women were even across white, pink, red, yellow, purple, and brown. Responses to brown did not indicate any real trend. Men and women were more negative toward pink than brown.

Discussion

Previous studies have shown that children's emotional associations tend to be positive for all colors (Boyatzis & Varghese, 1994). In the present study, this trend held true for adults, though to a lesser extent. Nearly 75% of the children's responses in Boyatzis and Varghese's study were positive, whereas only 49% of the adults' emotional associations in the present study were positive. The results of this study also confirm the finding by Boyatzis and Varghese that males tend to respond more positively to dark colors than females do.

Furthermore, in the present study, the traditional association of red with sadness and anger was not found. Boyatzis and Varghese ( 1994) did find that children associated the color red with excitement and happiness, and this finding was also confirmed in the present study: red was most often associated with excitement.

Traditionally, blue has been associated with males and pink with females. The findings of the present study do not appear to support this suggestion. Surprisingly, blue was the most favored color and the most frequently worn color for both the women and the men. No woman cited pink as her favorite color. This finding may be an indication of the reduction of the so-called gender gap and is probably largely attributable to the prevalence of blue denim jeans. Because the sample under study consisted of university undergraduates, many of them were probably wearing jeans on the day they completed the survey.

The reason that blue elicited the highest number of positive responses and was most often seen as the favorite color seems to be because many participants associated blue with the ocean or the sky. Both were seen to be limitless, calm, or serene.

Green also prompted a large number of positive responses, along with red and yellow. Reasons given for positive responses to green consistently showed that green was associated with the environment: forests, trees, and nature. Yellow was seen to be a positive color because it was seen to be bright, like the sun. Red was seen to be positive because it was a "strong positive colour" and a "warm colour."

On the other hand, gray was seen to be most negative because it tended to be associated with rainy days and elicited sad or bored emotional responses. This finding raises an interesting question for future research. Is there a higher tendency for depression to occur on rainy, overcast days? Moreover, are the moods of people affected by the environment in which they live? For example, does depression tend to occur more in countries where there is a lot of rain?

Boyatzis and Varghese (1994) reported emotional responses for every color from every child. These responses were then simply categorized into six emotions: happy, strong, excited, sad, angry, and boring. However, in the present study, a more complex categorization scheme was needed. Emotional responses had to be recategorized, and a no-emotion response category had to be included. There was also a requirement to include two general response categories in an attempt to capture the large variety of emotional responses. These categories were simply labeled positive and negative.

Overall, the findings of this study tend to confirm many of the conclusions provided by Boyatzis and Varghese (1994), including the suggestion that color-emotion associations become more complex with increasing age. Future research should be directed toward obtaining larger sample sizes and a more differentiated sample. Such research would allow for random error and provide concrete evidence in the area of color-emotion associations.

Answer 1

1. The purpose of the article or problem statement

The purpose of the research is to identify what effects colours have on our emotions and feelings, so that wiser decisions could be made in a better way so as to design work places of homes according to their requirements.

2. A brief summary of the literature review

In the literature review, there are four different sections, including definition of colour, in which previous works such as of (Aves & Aves, 1994) has been sighted, who defined the primary colours. This was followed by the theory of Combining colours, sighting the work of wright. The context of couloir was explained by De Bortoli and Maroto (2001), with Psychological properties of colour being given by wright, saying that yellow is the most psychologically strong colour.

3. What are the research questions or hypotheses relevant to "How color affects one's mood"?  

Does colours affect the mood and psychology of the individuals. Do colours change mood, increase memory or increase stimulation.

4. A basic description of the design/methodology of the research study (if applicable)

The methodology of the research included survey of students by distribution of questionnaires. A union complex was chosen in an University, due to the vividity of colours. First direct observations on the area were made, noting the colour and the area of the place. And 550 questionnaires were given to students m out of which 490 could be retrieved.

5. A report of the findings of the article, and, that colours on the exterior make the students excited to go to the college.

And that these colours used are also increasing arousal, and that the colours used were in complement with the environment. It was observed that the colours were good combinations both on the interior and exterior.

6. the value or use of the article in relation to a research project that has to do with " How color affects one's mood"?   

This article or research is important, since humans live in a world where they not only come across a monotonous black and white world, rather view many combinations of colours and stay around many colours. Also, in a home environment, office environment or anywhere that a person spends their time, if the colours are amicable, it would mean that the person would be in an emotionally stable form and could function at their optimal level. Henc, this research is important.