Psychology of Colors

Introduction

Color is essential to our daily lives. It is defined as "sensation produced in the eye by rays of decomposed light" and "effect produced by a ray of light of a particular wavelength or by a mixture of these". In the domain of physics, color means a certain kind of light stimulus which has an effect on the human eyes. In the domain of psychology, color has a deep impact on the mind of the viewer. In other words, human eyes sense a color as a stimulus in the form of light and human brains further process the color with the result that feelings and emotions are evoked. The process of perceiving color comprises of three components: a source of light, an object to be illuminated, and the eye and brain to perceive the color. Associated feeling or emotion towards the perceived color is induced in our brains simultaneously. This feeling or emotion is termed as color emotion. Color directly affects the parts of the nervous system which induce emotional arousal. Many researchers in the field of color emotion have indicated that every color has its own meaning, and different colors or color combinations convey different meanings to people. When a person is viewing a color, his or her mental perception includes memories, soft, hard, warm; cool, gaudy and plain etc, and these are incorporated in the emotional response.

Color

Color is an essential component in our daily lives. It can enrich our visual perception. Scientifically, color may mean a certain kind of light stimulus which has an effect on the human eyes, or the result of such an effect has an impact in the mind of the viewer. There are three elements involved in the color perception process: a source of light, an object to be illuminated and the eye and brain to perceive the color. In other words, recognizing a color involves both physical actions i.e. a stimulus in the form of light. This stimulus received by the eye and interpreted by the brain which introduces feeling and emotion.

Color Impact

The human eye/mind can distinguish between almost 10 million colors, yet we have little knowledge as to whether the color one person sees in this massive color array is the same as others. There is a core set of four to seven colors that are universally known and defined by all cultures; the basic four are black, white, red and blue. Thus for the most part, colors are a subjective, physical perception - they really don't exist at all. Yellow is Yellow only in our thoughts, it is only the function of our eyes that creates colors. One hundred forty years ago researchers were already wrestling with color influence questions. These researchers made the first steps towards understanding the nature by which color-object relationships are established, and the subconscious impact of color on everyday life. The notion that color plays a critical role in human biological development, mental and motor efficiency, psychological pleasing and emotional state, and is ...