Colors may be universally associated with certain emotions, a European study has found.

Red is pinned to love or anger, blue to sadness or black to death, and similar links appear to exist in other parts of the world.

Researchers said they could use the different associations between certain colors and what they stand for to predict which country someone came from.

Scientists from the universities of Auckland, Lausanne in Switzerland and Johannes Gutenber in Mainz, Germany carried out their research on 711 people.

The participants all came from the U.K., Germany, Greece or China, and answered to rate how colors made them feel.

The colors included in the study were white, black, gray, red, yellow, green, blue, orange, purple, pink, brown and turquoise.

They were shown to people in word form rather than images because the study was done online and researchers need to eliminate the chance that screens show different hues. People ranked how closely they linked them to the following emotions: anger, interest, amusement, pride, joy, pleasure, contentment, admiration, love, relief, compassion, sadness, guilt, regret, shame, disappointment, fear, disgust, contempt or hate.

The researchers, led by Johannes Gutenber University’s Daniel Oberfeld, wrote, “Red is associated with both positive and negative emotions while black is unambiguously associated with negative emotions.

“In the current study, red was often associated with love and anger, while black was associated with sadness, hate and fear among other negative emotions.”

Other colors which had strong associations across countries were pink with love, gray with disappointment or sadness and orange with joy or pleasure.

Some other colors, however, had more nuanced associations.

For example, people in Greece were far more likely to associate turquoise with relief and purple with sadness than those in other countries.

While people in the U.K. and Germany strongly associated yellow with joy, Greek and Chinese people did not feel the same.

Positive colors were yellow, white, turquoise, pink, orange and green. Negative were gray and black.

Oberfeld’s team added, “Particularly strong color-emotion associations were observed for red, black and pink, and particularly weak associations were observed for brown and purple.”

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【明确地】míngquè de unambiguously clearly expressed or understood

【有细微差别的】yǒu xìwēi chābié de nuanced slightly different

最新一项欧洲的研究发现，世界各地可能都会把颜色与某些情绪联系到一起。

红色代表爱或愤怒，蓝色代表悲伤，黑色代表死亡，在世界其他地方，颜色和情绪之间似乎也存在类似的联系。

研究人员表示，他们可以利用不同色彩代表的不同情绪来预测一个人来自哪个国家。来自瑞士洛桑奥克兰大学和德国美因茨约翰内斯•古登堡大学的科学家们对711人进行了研究。参与者来自英国、德国、希腊或中国，他们对颜色给他们带来的感觉进行了评分。研究中涉及的颜色包括白色、黑色、灰色、红色、黄色、绿色、蓝色、橙色、紫色、粉色、棕色和蓝绿色。这些颜色以文字而非图片的形式展示给参与者，因为这项研究是在网上进行的，研究人员需要确保屏幕上显示的是相同的内容。

人们对这些颜色与下列情绪的关联程度进行了排名：愤怒、兴趣、开心、骄傲、喜悦、快乐、满足、钦佩、爱、宽慰、同情、悲伤、内疚、遗憾、羞愧、失望、恐惧、厌恶、蔑视或憎恨。

研究人员写道：“红色与积极和消极情绪都有关，而毫无疑问，黑色与消极情绪有关。”这项研究的负责人是约翰内斯•古登堡大学的丹尼尔•奥伯菲尔德博士。

“在目前的研究中，红色常与爱和愤怒联系在一起，而黑色则与悲伤、仇恨和恐惧等负面情绪联系在一起。”

其他与情绪普遍存在强烈关联的颜色有：粉色代表爱，灰色代表失望或悲伤，橙色代表喜悦或快乐。然而，其他一些颜色与情绪有更微妙的关联。例如，与其他国家的人相比，希腊人更容易将蓝绿色与宽慰联系在一起，将紫色与悲伤联系在一起。虽然英国人和德国人常常把黄色和快乐联系在一起，但希腊人和中国人却不这样看。表达积极情绪的颜色有黄色、白色、蓝绿色、粉色、橙色和绿色。与消极情绪相关的有灰色和黑色。奥伯菲尔德的研究小组补充说：“我们观察到，红色、黑色和粉色与情绪的关联程度很强，而棕色和紫色与情绪的关联程度则特别弱。” (chinadaily.com.cn)