Abstract
Abstract. This work arose from an interest in seeking the origins, in the field of psychological assessment, of knowledge on the relationship between color and affect. This relationship in psychological assessment has existed since Herman Rorschach published his book Psychodiagnostics. In 1967 Beck stated that it was not Rorschach who discovered the relationship between color and affectivity, recognizing that there was evidence that this relationship had been accepted since the early days of civilization. In the 1940s, studies on painting and personality and on the artistic production of psychotic patients began to appear more prominently and culminated in Buck’s work, with his suggestion for inclusion of colors in the HTP test. In the 1950s, Pfister and Lücher published their color tests, with some theoretical considerations about the cultural and physiological aspects related to the symbolic interpretation of colors. Neuroscience can now be used to better understand how color perception and processing work in the brain, although the connection between color and affect in this field needs to be explored more. Studies in different areas such as physics, anthropology, ethology, and sociology suggest that a combination of factors related to the qualities of the light stimulus and its perception are also associated with the colors in nature and their symbolism that lead to the affective connotations of colors.
References
2022). Hermann Rorschach’s psychodiagnostics [Book review]. Rorschachiana, 43(1), 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1027/1192-5604/a000154
(1984). Whole properties: Determinants of determinants. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 59, 847–851.
(1984, July). Tachistoscopic Rorschach presentation to the several cerebral hemispheres [Paper presentation]. XI International Rorschach Congress, Barcelona, Spain.
(1967). Le test du Rorschach
([The Rorschach Test] . PUF.1969). Basic color terms. Their universality and evolution. University of California Press.
(1950). Color psychology and color therapy. A factual study of the influence of color on human life. University Books.
(1948/2003). Casa, Arvore e Pessoa. HTP. Manual e Guia de Interpretação. Vetor.
(2019). Exploring EEG effective connectivity network in estimating influence of color on emotion and memory. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 13, Article 66. https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2019.00066
(1954). The life and work of Hermann Rorschach. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 18(5), 173–219.
(2015). Color and psychological functioning: A review of theoretical and empirical work. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 368. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00368
(1941). A critical and experimental study of colour preferences. The American Journal of Psychology, 54(3), 385–394. https://doi.org/10.2307/1417683
(2012). Implications of recent research in neurobiology for psychological assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment, 94(5), 440–449.
(2003). Color vision. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 26, 181–206. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.26.041002.131116
(1958). The clinical application of projective drawings. Charles C. Thomas.
(2018). Correspondence analysis of color-emotion associations. Color Research and Application, 43(2), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.22171
(2019). Embodied associations beyond the Rorschach: Color, emotion, and personality [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center.
(2007). Biological components of sex differences in color preference. Current Biology, 17(16), 623–625. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.022
(2017).
(Understanding colour perception and preference . In J. BestEd., Colour design: Theories and applications (pp. 169–192). Elsevier.2020). Influence of color on emotion recognition is not bidirectional: An investigation of the association between color and emotion using a stroop-like task. Psychological Reports, 123(4), 1226–1239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119850480
(2017). Differences in brain hemodynamics in response to achromatic and chromatic cards of the Rorschach. A fMRI study. Rorschachiana, 37(1), 41–57. https://doi.org/10.1027/1192-5604/a000076
(1974). Effects of four psychological primary colors on GSR, heart rate, and respiration rate. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 38, 736–766.
(2020). Universal patterns in color-emotion associations are further shaped by linguistic and geographic proximity. Psychological Science, 31(10), 1245–1260.
(2020). Feeling blue or seeing red? Similar patterns of emotion associations with colour patches and colour terms. i-Perception, 11(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/101177/2041669520902484
(2020). Polarities influence implicit associations between colour and emotion. Acta Psychologica, 209, Article 103143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103143
(1929). Gestalt psychology. Liveright.
(1981). Color-matching, color-naming and color-memory in split-brain patients. Neuropsychologia, 4, 523–541.
(2018). Depressive symptoms are associated with color vision but not olfactory function in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 30(2), 122–129. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.17030063
(1974). Test de los colores
([Color test] . Paidós.2009). Context specificity of implicit preferences: The case of human preference for red. Emotion, 9(5), 734–738.
(1954). Psychologie
([Psychology] . Steinkopf.1975/1984). The psychology of consciousness. Penguin Books.
(1988).
(Beauty may differ in each half of the eye of the beholder . In I. RentschlerB. HerzbergerD. EspteinEds., Beauty and the brain: Biological aspects of aesthetics (pp. 243–256). Birkhauser.1981). Psychodiagnostics: A diagnostic test based on perception. Hans Huber. (Original work published 1921)
(2021). Hermann Rorschach’s psychodiagnostics: Newly translated and annotated 100th anniversary edition (
(P. J. Keddy, R. Signer, P. Erdberg, & A. Schneider-Stocking, Eds. & Trans.) . Hogrefe Publishing. (Original work published 1921)1966). Experiential foundations of Rorschach’s test. Basic Books.
(1964). Color and personality: A manual for the color pyramid test. Hans Huber.
(2002).
(The right brain as the neurobiological substrate of Freud’s dynamic unconscious . In D. ScharffEd., The psychoanalytic century: Freud’s legacy for the future (pp. 61–88). Other Press.2017). The inkblots. Hermann Rorschach, his iconic test, and the power of seeing. Crown Publishers.
(1977).
(Perceptual understanding of color response . In M. A. Rickers-OsviankinaEd., Rorschach psychology (pp. 251–301). Robert E. Krieger Publishing CO.2011). Etude du modèle théorique du rapport des déterminants de Rorschach par leur comparaison avec une histoire faite avec les réponses
([Study of the theoretical model of the relation of the Rorschach determinants by comparing them with a story made with the answers] [Doctoral dissertation] Université Lumière Lyon 2.2016). Relação entre cor e produção de respostas no Rorschach: Implicações
([Relation between color and production of responses in Rorschach: Some implications] . Revista Iberoamericana de Diagnóstico y Evaluación Psicológica, 1(41), 174–181. https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/4596/459646901015/html/index.html2014). As pirâmides coloridas de Pfister. Versão para crianças e adolescentes
([Pfister’s colored pyramids. Version for children and adolescents] . Casa do Psicólogo/Pearson.1910). Principles of physiological psychology. Macmillan.
(1995). A prova de Rorschach, a especialização hemisférica e a epilepsia
([The Rorschach Test, hemispheric specialization and epilepsy] [Postdoctoral thesis] Departamento de Psiquiatria, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo1999). The clinical and functional measurement of cortical (in) activity in the visual brain, with special reference to the two subdivisions (V4 and V4α) of the human colour centre. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 354(1387), 1371–1382. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1999.0485
(1998). Three cortical stages of colour processing in the human brain. Brain, 121, 1669–1685. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/121.9.1669
(