What Color Are You?
I don’t mean your skin color. Although the most used color words are white, brown and red. I don’t know if that’s connected to skin color or not, it might be.
I can understand cultural differences. Sometimes we all struggle with misunderstandings associated with the different cultures into which we were born and raised. But I seriously don’t get it when someone can’t get along with a whole group of people, based entirely upon the color of their skin.
But that’s another essay. In this one, I want to know what your psychological color is.
Yes, there is a psychology of color. It’s not concerned with what your favorite color is, mine is blue. But what do certain colors make you feel?
Color me not surprised that dull gray days challenge our emotions. Color me unamazed that blue sky, puffy white clouds with peaks at a yellow sun, encourage contentment.
Color language is linked to emotion. For example, “he was red with rage after hearing what they said about him.” “I was feeling fairly blue last Monday with all that rain and wind.” “She was positively green even looking at food, after having the stomach flu.”
It’s kind of rare to pinpoint actual scientific evidence regarding the psychology of color. Factoids are more likely to have been born more from psychological color theory, than from facts that can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I wear more black, navy and brown in the winter months. The bright green, yellow, orange, white and blue stuff comes out in the spring and summer. This might be because clothing designers and manufacturers make summer clothes in those colors and winter clothes in those colors, but some of it might be emotional choices on our part.
This is not a scientific treatise so let’s just have some fun with color. “Color me excited” to assign some colors to emotions.
Red intimidates me; it’s overstimulating. Black is solid and comforting. Green makes me happy and thrive. Yellow invigorates me. White is blank and needs something else to complete it.
Your reactions to color may be somewhat different from mine. However, most people see colors as symbolically and metaphorically similar.
For example, red is probably seen universally as powerful as in the “power tie” on a businessman or red dress or jacket on a woman in business. Silver is a symbol of innovation, cutting edge, high-tech, and modernity.
Speaking of psychology, the 1970 book, “What Color is Your Parachute,” by Richard Nelson Bolles is an immensely useful book of self-assessment designed to suss out one’s greatest passions, if not your purpose in life. So, what color are you?
I think I might be purple. It’s not a color that I wear very often, but I think it speaks to who I am, somehow.
If color can have a temperature or a season, I think purple is a cool color, a winter color. It’s quite saturated, deep, nearly black, and it’s got red and blue in it, but neither, entirely.
Purple is solid and real; it’s not something contrived or frou-frou. It doesn’t have so much red that it’s hot nor so much blue that it’s icy cold. Purple is “just alright with me.”
I wear a lot of bright yellow, green, navy blue and black. I like to wear brown too, and gray. I don’t mind wearing orange either. But no red.
Boy birds must stand out to their fewer in number female counterparts who are dressed in far less outstanding colors. Those red cardinals, blue jays, gold finches and others make a color spectacle out of themselves to literally get noticed. “Look at me, choose me, notice me,” they seem to scream from their perches.
I wonder what colors attract what people. Brothels are often red. Hospitals tend toward muted greens, aqua, or neutral beige. Daycare centers are yellow.
Blue sky and yellow sun speak to promise. Green grass, green leaves, and “greenbacks” would have us living life to the fullest. But the protective brown bark on trees, mud, and decaying leaves are an almost universally despised color, brown. How come?
Our office is burgundy, a cool shade of red, with brown and black furniture and floor coverings. But our bedroom is teal and tan. The living and dining spaces are I think something called desert sand and patterned winter white with accents of blue. The kitchen is blue, brown and white. We’re a bit all over the spectrum of “living color.”
We drive a metallic gray vehicle. The color selection was deliberate. Neither my spouse nor I need to stand out in a red car, but we like the fact that our car is a sort of snazzy Euro-style, somewhat apart from all the black, white, and silver vehicles on the highway.
Do you know that there is such a thing as color trends? The Pantone Color Institute even devises a color of the year based on color psychology. This year it’s Mocha Mousse and some people are a little mad about it, being mud-brown-based and all.
But doesn’t that descriptive color make you feel just a little bit warm, rich, silky and smooth? I know that I, for one, could use some feelings of luxurious decadence this year, even if it’s in the form of an arbitrary color.