Colors and Prejudice

I wanted to find out whether or how colors can affect people and if they express themselves through colors. So, I made up a questionnaire that was directed towards young people aged 20-30, and my main focus was to check whether their color preferences is a result of their education.

Colors are very much used in visual arts, but also by political parties, sports team, advertising and so on. People tend to associate certain colors with a certain social or political group. Yet I think this should be avoided, since it can limit one's perspective, especially in the case of artists. I think "color" is to the visual arts what the "word" is to literature. And people may have cliches and stereotypes not only in choosing their words and expressions, but also in choosing the colors they wear or want to have around them. I find this the topic of the questionnaire interesting, because writing, the art of combining words, is very similar in my opinion to painting, the art of combining colors.

The first eight questions treat the relationship between people and colors, and the last two ones, the relationship between colors and other fields (food and music). I structured it like this because I wanted to start with the things that are physically closer to people, to things that are mentally close, and then to things that are exterior to them, and yet they use them and ingest them (food and music, that is). The last two questions are meant to check if colors indeed can influence one's perspective of things. For instance, a food may seem tasty just because it has certain warm, vivid colors in it. And music was sometimes associated with colors, if we come to think that there is a musical genre called "blues", and musical sub-genres often have the word "dark" in their name (dark metal, dark step, etc).

Here is the questionnaire per se:

1. You wear the same colors mostly every day, sometimes, very often, never, when I am busy;

Answer
57% sometimes
43% very often

2. Do you think there are colors for girls and colors for boys?
- yes no

Answer
71% yes
29% no

3. Do you associate certain colors with elegance/attractiveness?
- yes no

Answer
86% yes
29% no

4. Still related to your answer to the previous question, what caused you to make such associations?
- my perception, fashion, education;

Answer
72% my perception
14% education
14% fashion

5. Which are the colors you have to see every day (either at work, or at home)
- warm, intense colors like red, orange, yellow, cold colors like dark blue, dark green, brown, black, other colors;

Answer
57% other
29% warm colors
14% black

6. Do you sense that the colors of your surroundings affect you in some way?
- sometimes, very often, not so often, never, always.

Answer
57% sometimes
14% always
14% very often
5% not so often

7. Do you think the colors we should wear have to change as we grow older (from lighter, more intense to darker and more austere)
- of course, for some persons (depending on their social status), no;

Answer
71% no
29% for some persons

8. Do you think your opinion concerning the colors we should wear as we grow older was shaped by:
- parents, school environment, working environment, none of them;

Answer
50% parents
33% none of them
17% working environment

9. Do you think the colors of a meal can influence our perception of its taste?
- it might be, yes, not at all;

Answer
71% yes
29% it might be

10. Do you tend to associate a certain type of music with a color?
- sometimes, quite often, no, I never thought about it;

Answer
43% I never thought about it
29% sometimes
14% no
14% quite often

Most of those asked admitted their preference for variety in colors, which is obvious in the fact that they only sometimes wear the same colors more days in a row. The majority of the people questioned thought that colors are related to gender. So, there are colors for girls, and colors for boys, and also one's preference for certain colors should not change with growing age (like the idea that old people should wear darker colors, as compared to young people who can wear more intense colors). I find that very interesting, as it is breaking a cliche often induced to us by the older generations (such as grandparents). People's environment differs in colors from one another, so it was a bit difficult to see whether the colors of one's working or home environment influences him/her or not. A majority stated that the colors they see everyday are others than the ones mentioned in this questionnaire, which shows that perhaps their working environment is quite neutrally-colored (I intentionally chose opposite range of colors). Since they mostly agree that colors can affect them, they also may consider that their home and working environment's colors are reasonably chosen.

Some people with very clear tastes in colors may find it a bit offensive to be asked questions regarding their preferences, and wonder what lies behind those questions.

There are some social/psychological and inherited patterns regarding the choice of colors. The people interviewed seemed to have some educated opinions regarding the effects of colors, but they also see colors as a way of expressing themselves (even creatively).