It’s one of the classic games of many magazines: revealing to us what our favorite color says about our personality, or what effect a particular color can have on our well-being. A new study has discredited this approach. “Everyone can find a bit of themselves in descriptions related to their favorite colors, so the statements can seem more true than they actually are,” says Domicele Jonauskaite, senior researcher at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study “What does your favorite color say about your personality? Not much ”(“ What does your favorite color say about your personality? Not much ”), published in the most recent issue of the journal Personality Science. Press interviewed her.
Q. Where did the idea to do this study come from?
PHOTO PROVIDED DOMICELE JONAUSKAITE
Domicele Jonauskaite, senior researcher at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study
R. The media often make claims about how colors affect a person’s well-being, emotions or mood. These statements about the “effects” of colors are meant to help people choose the best color for their surroundings, clothing, or a brand’s logo… One of these statements is the belief that our color preferences reveal our personality. For example, people who like warm colors are often seen as more outgoing. But personality psychologists don’t have a “favorite color test” in their repertoire. We tested this type of statement with 323 French-speaking participants in Switzerland to see if general trends emerged.
Q. Were you surprised to find that there was no connection between color preferences and personality?
R. To be honest, no. We weren’t very surprised. First of all, many of the statements presented in the media are very general and therefore apply to a lot of people. The personality traits mentioned are often vague, and the same personality trait is mentioned for several different colors. If we compare people who like a color to everyone else, color is unlikely to differentiate these groups. Everyone can find a little of themselves in descriptions of their favorite colors, so the claims may seem more true than they actually are. We did not find specific traits based on people’s favorite colors, for example traits specific to the “red lover” group.
Conversely, we can think about what would happen if our color preferences changed over time – would our personalities change too? Research also shows that people like many different colors, with blue and red being two of the most popular colors. If those personality connections were true, what would it be like to be a person who loves both blue and red? Would she have a “hot” and a “cold” personality at the same time?
Q. When we think of red, we think of energy and action. When you think of beige or brown, you think of something boring or unremarkable. So we can think about these things, but they don’t translate into personality traits, do they?
R. That’s right. Studies carried out in 30 countries show consistent associations between colors and emotions, regardless of the cultural background of the respondents. These associations are stable no matter how the color is presented – as a word or as a color swatch. For example, red is consistently associated with powerful emotions, both positive and negative – love, passion, anger, hate, to name a few. But there is no reason to believe that these abstract emotional meanings of colors translate into the personalities of people who love these colors. If most people are aware of the same abstract meanings, then these meanings are a form of cultural knowledge. We can like or dislike colors for a variety of reasons without relating them to our personality.