Ecological influences on individual differences in color preference

Abstract

How can the large, systematic differences that exist between individuals’ color preferences be explained? The ecological valence theory (Palmer & Schloss, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:8877–8882, 2010) posits that an individual’s preference for each particular color is determined largely by his or her preferences for all correspondingly colored objects. Therefore, individuals should differ in their color preferences to the extent that they have different preferences for the same color-associated objects or that they experience different objects. Supporting this prediction, we found that individuals’ color preferences were predicted better by their own preferences for correspondingly colored objects than by other peoples’ preferences for the same objects. Moreover, the fit between color preferences and affect toward the colored objects was reliably improved when people’s own idiosyncratic color–object associations were included in addition to a standard set of color–object associations. These and related results provide evidence that individual differences in color preferences are reliably influenced by people’s personal experiences with colored objects in their environment.