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Art objects can evoke certain emotions. Color is a fundamental element of visual art and plays a significant role in how art is perceived. This paper introduces a novel approach to classifying emotions in art using Fuzzy Sets. We employ a fuzzy approach because it aligns well with human judgments’ imprecise and subjective nature. Extensive fuzzy colors (n=120) and a broad emotional spectrum (n=10) allow for a more human-consistent and context-aware exploration of emotions inherent in paintings. First, we introduce the fuzzy color representation model. Then, at the fuzzification stage, we process the Wiki Art Dataset of paintings tagged with emotions, extracting fuzzy dominant colors linked to specific emotions. This results in fuzzy color distributions for ten emotions. Finally, we convert them back to a crisp domain, obtaining a knowledge base of color-emotion associations in primary colors. Our findings reveal strong associations between specific emotions and colors; for instance, gratitude strongly correlates with green, brown, and orange. Other noteworthy associations include brown and anger, orange with shame, yellow with happiness, and gray with fear. Using these associations and Jaccard similarity, we can find the emotions in the arbitrary untagged image. We conducted a 2AFC experiment involving human subjects to evaluate the proposed method. The average hit rate of 0.77 indicates a significant correlation between the method’s predictions and human perception. The proposed method is simple to adapt to art painting retrieval systems. The study contributes to the theoretical understanding of color-emotion associations in art, offering valuable insights for various practical applications besides art, like marketing, design, and psychology.

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking—a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact.

Do English-speakers think about anger as “red” and sadness as “blue”? Some theories of emotion suggests that color(s)—like other biologically-derived signals- should be reliably paired with an emotion, and that colors should differentiate across emotions. We assessed consistency and specificity for color-emotion pairings among English-speaking adults. In study 1, participants (n = 73) completed an online survey in which they could select up to three colors from 23 colored swatches (varying hue, saturation, and light) for each of ten emotion words. In study 2, different participants (n = 52) completed a similar online survey except that we added additional emotions and colors (which better sampled color space). Participants in both studies indicated the strength of the relationship between a selected color(s) and the emotion. In study 1, four of the ten emotions showed consistency, and about one-third of the colors showed specificity, yet agreement was low-to-moderate among raters even in these cases. When we resampled our data, however, none of these effects were likely to replicate with statistical confidence. In study 2, only two of 20 emotions showed consistency, and three colors showed specificity. As with the first study, no color-emotion pairings were both specific and consistent. In addition, in study 2, we found that saturation and lightness, and to a lesser extent hue, predicted color-emotion agreement rather than perceived color. The results suggest that previous studies which report emotion-color pairings are likely best thought of experiment-specific. The results are discussed with respect to constructionist theories of emotion.

Color and emotion are metaphorically associated in the human mind. This color–emotion association affects perceptual judgment. For example, stimuli representing colors can affect judgment of facial expressions. The present study examined whether colors associated with happiness (e.g., yellow) and sadness (e.g., blue and gray) facilitate judgments of the associated emotions in facial expressions. We also examined whether temporal proximity between color and facial stimuli interacts with any of these effects. Participants were presented with pictures of a happy or sad face against a yellow-, blue-, or gray-colored background and asked to judge whether the face represented happiness or sadness as quickly as possible. The face stimulus was presented simultaneously (Experiment 1) or preceded for one second by the colored background (Experiment 2). The analysis of response time showed that yellow facilitated happiness judgment, while neither blue nor gray facilitated sadness judgment. Moreover, the effect was found only when the face and color stimuli were presented simultaneously. The results imply that the association of sadness with blue and gray is weak and, consequently, does not affect emotional judgment. Our results also suggest that temporal proximity is critical for the effect of the color–emotion association (e.g., yellow–happiness) on emotional judgment.

Product color emotion design has become an important new design direction following the development of user-centered design. In this paper, we integrated Kansei engineering (KE) and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) algorithm to explore a new evaluation method of product color emotion design. Firstly, based on KE, a user emotion image perception space was established using big data, semantic differential (SD), and factor analysis (FA). Secondly, the product color emotion evaluation model based on XGBoost was established using XGBoost algorithm and experimental data. In application, we established an XGBoost based evaluation model of exercise bike color emotion to verify the effectiveness of this evaluation model. We then analyzed the graph of feature importance which was output by the XGBoost model and learned the weight of each color parameter. Next, we used the case of dust mite controller to verify effectiveness of this color design method in different type product. Moreover, we compared predictions of the XGBoost model, multiple linear regression (MLR) model, and the back propagation neural network (BPNN) model. The result proved that the color emotion evaluation model based on XGBoost had a better performance. All the above results indicated that the product color emotion design method based on XGBoost could effectively reveal the user’s color emotion and help designers make color scheme decisions. So, it has certain applicability and practicability, and this method can be applied to a variety of color design cases.

The idea of art as a language of emotion has historical roots. This study asked if color, as an integrated pictorial element in Himalayan art, can communicate the intended emotions to North American viewers. To investigate the extent to which those emotions are congruent cross-culturally, participants were assigned to four conditions of varying levels of informativeness, based on whether they did or did not receive an informational brochure and a checklist of emotional terms to reference. Results were analyzed using Latent Semantic Analysis to assess the similarity of word meanings. Participant responses were compared to the emotions that should be conveyed according to Himalayan culture and curators of an exhibit on Himalayan art. Cosine values were generally high in all conditions, indicating that certain colors (i.e., red, black, and gold) can convey consistent emotional information to viewers from very different cultures, even with little or no corresponding verbal material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking-a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Surov.)

Delving into the close relationship between sense and emotion mingled with language can be of utmost importance in studies related to management of emotions. In this regard, the current study qualitatively attempted to examine to what extent sense-induced emotions can be recognized, labelled, and managed by individuals. To this end, 36 Iranian males and females were asked to participate in interviews on color-emotion associations. Their responses to colors were categorized into positive, negative, and no emotion. The overall results revealed that 10 major themes can account for idiosyncratic variations in expressing color emotions. Culture, age, and education were found to impact individuals’ emo-sensory expressions. In the end, based on the findings of this study, a three-set model of emotion expression was proposed to show the bond between sense, emotion, and language. As a result, a new concept called emo-sensory intelligence was introduced which transcends emotional intelligence (EQ) and sensory intelligence (SQ) by shifting its focus to sense-induced emotions.

After controlling for lightness and chroma statistically or colorimetrically, Schloss et al. (2020, JOSA A) showed that yellow hues were not judged to be happier than blue hues. They concluded that high lightness and high chroma rather than yellow hue drive yellow‐happy associations. We agree with their main conclusions but wish to expand on two underdeveloped discussion themes: (i) the notion of experience versus concept, and (ii) implicit assumptions. Our commentary highlights the complexity of psychological studies on color‐affect associations, including possibilities of alternative data interpretations and directions for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some overlapping and contradicting results a number of studies have demonstrated that there is an interrelation between colors and emotions. Some studies conclude that colors and other aesthetic effects are strong emotion triggers inducing affective reaction when interacting with interfaces or webpages. Our study tests color-emotion mappings in interface environments within a modified framework of Ou et al. (2004a, b, c) applying a rating task in an in-group quasi-experimental setting for colors selected from a typical color scheme (MS Paint 7 Palette) used in digital environments. We have characterized and grouped the tested colors with respect to evaluation tendencies regarding emotion association pairs - polar adjectives used in the rating task. Correlations between colors that are evaluated similarly with respect to emotion association pairs as well as emotion association pairs evaluated similarly with respect to the tested colors have also been detected and discussed in the study. The study contributes to the interrelated areas of interface usability and design analysis, usability improvement, and interface color categorization. The results show that perception of color-emotion mappings is age and gender dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]