Red items on a street market stall inWan Chai Market, Hong Kong. Red is considered lucky by many Chinese people.
In thepsychology of color,color preferences are the tendency for an individual or a group toprefer somecolors over others, such as having afavorite color or atraditional color.
An 'ecologicalvalence theory' (EVT) has been suggested to explain why people have preferences for different colors. This is the idea that the preference for color is determined by the averageaffective response to everything the individual associates with the color. Hence, positive emotional experiences with a particular color are likely to increase the propensity to develop a preference for that color and vice versa. Social and cultural factors also factor into this affective response. A study in 2011 on the effects of "school spirit" and color preferences found members of Berkeley were more likely to favor the school's official colors than rival university Stanford. This degree of preference was also correlated with their self-reported level of "school spirit". The researchers conducting the study concluded that this was evidence for the EVT.[1]
Infants as young as 12 weeks old exhibit color preferences.[2] Generally, children prefer the colors red/pink and blue, and cool colors are preferred over warm colors. Color perception of children 3–5 years of age is an indicator of their developmental stage. Color preferences tend to change as people age.[3]
Favoritism of colors varies widely. Often societal influences will have a direct impact on what colors are favored and disdained. In the West, the color black symbolizes mourning and sadness, red symbolizes anger and violence, white symbolizes purity and peace, and yellow symbolizes joy and luck (other colors lack a consistent meaning). From a recent study, it was discussed thatassociative learning is the process where an individual develops color preferences. In different countries, color preference vary. InChina, red indicates luck, while inNigeria andGermany it means the exact opposite.[4]
^Read, M., & Upington, D. (2009). Young Children's Color Preferences in the Interior Environment.Early Childhood Education Journal, 36(6), 491-496.doi:10.1007/s10643-009-0311-6
^Sable, Paul; Akcay, Okan (February 2010). "Color: Cross Cultural Marketing Perspectives As To What Governs Our Response To It".American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences.17 (1):950–954.
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Teller, Davida; Civan, Andrea; Bronson-Castain, Kevin (2004), "Infants' spontaneous color preferences are not due to adult-like brightness variations",Visual Neuroscience,21 (3):397–401,doi:10.1017/S0952523804213360,PMID15518220,S2CID37398241
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