A Cross-Cultural Study on Colour Emotion and Colour Harmony.

Abstract

This study investigates: a) the relationship between colour combinations and adjective combinations and b) the verification of colour harmony theory developed by Angela Wright (the Wright theory). Two experiments were carried out with subjects from the 6 cultures: British, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish. In the first experiment, 100 adjectives and 32 colours were used as stimuli presented on a calibrated Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display. All the colour stimuli were selected evenly from the 4 colour groups, CG 1 to CG 4, defined by the Wright theory, and so were the adjectives, from AG 1 to AG 4. In the experiment 5-colour wheels and 5-adjective combinations were generated from the stimuli. Subjects were asked to correlate colour wheels with adjective combinations in terms of colour emotion. Experimental results show good agreement between subject responses and the Wright theory especially in AG 2. In Experiment 2, subjects were presented with 2 colour wheels for each trial and were asked to choose the one that appeared to harmonise better than the other. Experimental results show good agreement between subject responses and the Wright theory in all the CGs. The comparisons of experimental data between subject groups