Аннотация
В эксперименте Дрезденского университета по изучению стереотипных представлений приняли участие 90 человек из Германии (37 мужчин и 53 женщины). Участники должны были найти наиболее подходящие цветовые ассоциации для 13 пар понятий. Палитра эксперимента включала 27 оттенков системы NCS. Для 23 понятий были установлены статистически значимые ассоциации (p=0.0001) как минимум с одним цветовым образцом. Специфическими оказались цветовые ассоциации немецких участников с понятиями грустный, беспокойный, далекий, безопасный, дешевый и дорогой. Наибольшее количество значений респонденты связали с основными цветами – красным, синим, желтым. Насыщенные оттенки выбирались более часто, чем светлые и темные.

Ключевые слова
социальные стереотипы, восприятие, ассоциации, цвет, цветовые ассоциации, Германия, эксперимент, социокультурные различия.

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Introduction
Research has indicated that individuals often associate various terms with colors (see e.g.: [1]). Some color connotations are thought to be universal. In particular, across cultures red is considered hot and intense and blue is strongly associated with peacefulness and calm [1–3]. At the same time, numerous studies have demonstrated cultural differences in color meanings and associations (see e.g.: [4–9]).

While there is a long history of experimental researching the meanings of color in German culture (see e.g.: [10–11]), the most previous studies used a limited set of verbal stimuli, that included no more than eleven basic color terms found in Berlin and Kay’s study on color names in various languages [12].

In this paper we are seeking to overcome the outlined limitations of the previous investigations and report a study examining how an extended set of visual color stimuli with different hue, lightness and saturation, originally developed by Ivar Jung [13], were associated with specific concepts by subjects from Germany.

Materials and method
Participants. 90 participants (37 males and 53 females) with a mean age of 22 years (ranging from 18 to 60) who were born and reside in Germany, completed the survey at Dresden University in February 2018. None of the participants had any problems with color vision.

Procedure. Data were collected in an experiment that previously was performed by Ivar Jung in 2015–2016 during a pilot stage in Sweden (N=70) and Nepal (N=77) [13], and in 2017 was conducted in Uganda (N=70) and Russia (N=70) [14–15].

Experiment participants were presented 13 pairs of opposites: warm–cold, sorrow–happiness, calm–upset, near–distant, young–old, feminine–masculine, fast–slow, strong–weak, false–true, cheap–expensive, friendly–dangerous, healthy–sick, me–others. The stimulus concepts were selected from previous research on color associations (e.g.: [2; 4–6]). Participants were asked to match the best suited color associations for the given terms.

Color stimuli. The color chart of the experiment consisted of 27 samples, selected from the Natural Color System (NCS). It included saturated shades of four primary colors (Y – yellow, R – red, B – blue, G – green) and four secondary colors (Y50R – yellow-red, R50B – purple, B50G – blue-green, G50Y – green-yellow) (middle row in Table 1). Additionally, we included into the chart one light (top row in Table 1) and one dark (bottom row in Table 1) shade of every primary and secondary color, as well as three achromatic colors – white, grey, and black. Stimulus size was 3 by 5 centimeters. All color samples were presented to participants at the same time under standard daylight illumination. 

Table 1

Color samples of the experiment

Results and discussion
The collocation of 27 colors and 26 concepts composes a 702-cell matrix (Table 2).

Table 2

Percentage associations to each concept

The 2,340 responses of the experiment participants filled in the cells, unevenly distributed. One third of all the matrix cells (237) remained empty: none of the participants connected the provided concepts with a particular color. Another one third of matches (213) referred to single instances, since they appeared only by one or maximum two participants and thus cannot be considered relevant. The majority of weak associations lay in the red-blue (RB), green (G), and blue-green (BG) regions of the color spectrum. Thus, only the remaining one third (252) from all the matrix cells were of interest for the color association analysis (Figure 1)

Figure 1. The results of associative connections of shades

Chi-square tests performed for each of the twenty-six concepts showed that twenty-three of them were associated significantly with at least one color at the 0.0001 level of significance (df. 26). The concepts calm, slow, and me did not have particular associated colors (Table 3).

Table 3

The most significant associations

Across 90 observers, each color sample used in this study was chosen up to 6 times (on average 0.97 times, SD = 0.43). 10 of 27 shades were selected more frequently than others (>10% of choices). These are two shades of red (B4 and A4) and yellow-red (B3 and A3), three shades of blue (A6, B6, and C6), together with bright yellow (B2), bright yellow-green (B9) and black (C1) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The total number of associations of 27 color samples

The number of associated terms varied with color. Red (B4) and light-yellow (A2) elicited the highest number of concept associations (20), while dark-orange (C3) the lowest (12).

Color associations had different intensities. The highest intensity of associations was revealed for light-blue (A6) with cold (59%), orange (B3) with warm (47%), pink (A4) with feminine (46%), yellow (B2) with happiness (41%). The lowest intensity of associated notions (<10%) had light, saturated and dark blue-green (A7, B7, C7), light and dark green (A8, C8).

In accordance with previous findings [4; 6], the primary hues yielded the greatest number of associations. The most popular were shades of red (R) (16%), blue (B) and yellow (Y) (both 14%) colors (Figure 3, left), summing to a total of almost half (44%) of the concepts tested.

The distribution of associations between the groups of shades with different lightness showed that saturated colors (group B) occurred most frequently (Figure 3, right).

Figure 3. Associations with hue (left) and groups of shades (right)

Additionally, we analyzed the correlation between the terms and three achromatic colors – white, grey and black (Figure 4). Achromatic colors were chosen in one tenth of all responses (9,5%). We revealed significant achromatic color associations only for two concepts – strong and expensive were linked with black (24,4% and 18,9% respectively).

Figure 4. Associations with achromatic shades

To reveal the culture specific associations the outcome for the German sample was compared to Swedish (N=70) [13; 14] and Russian (N=70) samples [14; 15].

The results showed unique color associations (with value divergence more than 15%) among the Germans especially for the concepts sorrow, upset, distant, and friendly (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Color associations for the concepts
sorrow, upset, distant, and friendly

In addition, for the pair of opposite concepts cheap–expensive a statistically significant difference was revealed in German sub-sample between the groups of shades (Figure 6). The great majority of participants (88%) chose color shades from different groups to denote the opposite concepts. More than a half of them (52%) matched the terms with the shades from neighboring groups: brilliant (B) – with one concept, and light or dark (A or C) – with the other one. More than a third of the participants (36%) connected the terms with extremely contrasting shades: light (A) and dark (C).

Figure 6. Associations with the groups of shades
for the concepts cheap and expensive

Conclusions
This experiment yielded the following results.

First, our findings affirm that there are consistent patterns in color choices for concepts within the German sample, showing that participants were making non-random color-concept matches.

Second, the use of an extended set of visual color stimuli allowed us to conduct a quantitative analysis of the chromatic structure of the concepts. We were able to specify hue, lightness and saturation of shades forming color associations and to visualize chromatic images related to these concepts in German sample.

This experiment is part of a series of experiments with color associations, which were performed in a number of countries hitherto. In further tests, a specified neutral background (NCS S 0500-N) will be chosen.

The results could be valuable in finding out whether there are commonalities in the association of color with certain adjectives describing moods. The results might be further of interest in compiling topical dictionaries and reference books, teaching activities, as well as contributing to a great spectrum of practical tasks in architecture, design and advertising communication.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Berit Bergström and her team at Natural Color System for colour samples. Yulia A. Griber was funded by «Dresden Senior Fellowship Program», according to the project № F-003661-553-Ü1D-1150506.

Literatura

1. Elliot A. J., Maier M. A. Color psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in Humans // Annual Review of Psychology 2014. – No. 65. – P. 95-120.

2. Madden Th. J., Hewlett K., Roth M. S. Managing Images in Different Cultures: A Cross-National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences // Journal of International Marketing. – 2000. – Vol. 8, No. 4. – P. 90-107.

3. Labrecque L. I., Milne G. R. Exciting Red and Competent Blue: the Importance of Color in Marketing // Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. – 2012. – Vol. 40, Iss. 5. – P. 711-727.

4. Bergum B. O., Bergum J. E. Population Stereotypes: an Attempt to Measure and Define // Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. – 1981. – Vol. 25, Iss. 1. – P. 662-665.

5. Courtney A. J. Chinese Population Stereotypes: Color Associations // Human Factors. – 1986. – Vol. 28 (1). – P. 97-99.

6. Chan A. Y. S., Courtney A. J. Color Associations for Hong Kong Chinese // International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics. – 2001. – No. 28. – P. 165-170.

7. Bradfield E. L. The Diversity of Color: An Analysis of Cross-Cultural Color Symbolism. Honors Theses. – Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 2014. – 24 p.

8. Jacobs L., Keown Ch., Worthley R., Ghymn K.-Il. Cross-Cultural Color Comparisons: Global Marketers Beware // International Marketing Review. – 1991. – No. 8(3). – P. 21-30.

9. Gage J. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. – Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1999. – 335 p.

10. Hupka R. B., Zaleski Z., Otto J., Reidl L., Tarabrina N. V. The Colors of Anger, Envy, Fear, and Jealousy // Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. – 1997. – Vol. 28, Iss. 2. – P. 156-171.

11. Akcay O. Product Color Choice and Meanings of Color: A Case of Germany // International Journal of Business and Social Science. – 2013. – Vol. 4, No. 14. – P. 5-12.

12. Berlin B., Kay P. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. – Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. – 178 p.

13. Jung I. What are the Colours of the Words “Me” and “Others”? // Сolor in Urban Life: Images, Objects and Spaces / ed. by I. C. Ivanovic. – Santiago: Asociación Chilena del Color, 2016. – P. 188-191.

14. Jung I., Griber Y., Hanneburg J. What are the Colors of Health and Sickness? // Being Color with Health. AIC Color 2017 Proceedings / ed. by Y. J. Lee, J. Hwang, H. J. Suk, Y. K. Park. – Jeju: KSCS, 2017. – OS17-3.

15. Griber Y., Jung I. Colors of Health and Sickness: Sociocultural Research of Associative Connections // Society. Environment. Development. – 2017. – № 4. – P. 89-95.

Рекомендовано к публикации:
И.А.Баева, доктор психологических наук, член Редакционной коллегии,
Е.В.Пискунова, доктор педагогических наук, член Редакционной коллегии

Литература

1. Elliot A. J., Maier M. A. Color psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in Humans // Annual Review of Psychology 2014. – No. 65. – P. 95-120.

2. Madden Th. J., Hewlett K., Roth M. S. Managing Images in Different Cultures: A Cross-National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences // Journal of International Marketing. – 2000. – Vol. 8, No. 4. – P. 90-107.

3. Labrecque L. I., Milne G. R. Exciting Red and Competent Blue: the Importance of Color in Marketing // Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. – 2012. – Vol. 40, Iss. 5. – P. 711-727.

4. Bergum B. O., Bergum J. E. Population Stereotypes: an Attempt to Measure and Define // Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. – 1981. – Vol. 25, Iss. 1. – P. 662-665.

5. Courtney A. J. Chinese Population Stereotypes: Color Associations // Human Factors. – 1986. – Vol. 28 (1). – P. 97-99.

6. Chan A. Y. S., Courtney A. J. Color Associations for Hong Kong Chinese // International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics. – 2001. – No. 28. – P. 165-170.

7. Bradfield E. L. The Diversity of Color: An Analysis of Cross-Cultural Color Symbolism. Honors Theses. – Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 2014. – 24 p.

8. Jacobs L., Keown Ch., Worthley R., Ghymn K.-Il. Cross-Cultural Color Comparisons: Global Marketers Beware // International Marketing Review. – 1991. – No. 8(3). – P. 21-30.

9. Gage J. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. – Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1999. – 335 p.

10. Hupka R. B., Zaleski Z., Otto J., Reidl L., Tarabrina N. V. The Colors of Anger, Envy, Fear, and Jealousy // Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. – 1997. – Vol. 28, Iss. 2. – P. 156-171.

11. Akcay O. Product Color Choice and Meanings of Color: A Case of Germany // International Journal of Business and Social Science. – 2013. – Vol. 4, No. 14. – P. 5-12.

12. Berlin B., Kay P. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. – Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. – 178 p.

13. Jung I. What are the Colours of the Words “Me” and “Others”? // Сolor in Urban Life: Images, Objects and Spaces / ed. by I. C. Ivanovic. – Santiago: Asociación Chilena del Color, 2016. – P. 188-191.

14. Jung I., Griber Y., Hanneburg J. What are the Colors of Health and Sickness? // Being Color with Health. AIC Color 2017 Proceedings / ed. by Y. J. Lee, J. Hwang, H. J. Suk, Y. K. Park. – Jeju: KSCS, 2017. – OS17-3.

15. Griber Y., Jung I. Colors of Health and Sickness: Sociocultural Research of Associative Connections // Society. Environment. Development. – 2017. – № 4. – P. 89-95.