Influence of Color on Emotion Recognition Is Not Bidirectional: An Investigation of the Association Between Color and Emotion Using a Stroop-Like Task

Abstract

The association between color and emotion has been shown, with red facilitating recognition of anger and green facilitating recognition of happiness. However, it has been unclear if emotional stimulus conversely facilitates and/or inhibits recognition of such colors. This study used a Stroop-like task, which required participants to ignore facial expressions and recognize color, in order to investigate the influence of emotion on recognition of color. In addition, this study investigated the association between color and emotion recognition from emoticons, as it was recently suggested that the process of emotion recognition from emoticons was different from that of actual faces. Results revealed that for facial expressions and emoticons, color influenced emotion recognition, in line with previous studies. Conversely, facial expression did not influence recognition of color. The results suggest that in emotion recognition people consider surrounding contextual information and integrate it automatically; however, in color recognition, they do not.

Keywords

Facial expression emoticon emotion recognition background color

Introduction

Although emotion is recognized by various expressional cues such as voice prosody and body movement (Bänziger, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2009), facial expression is an important cue among these. Compared to other cues, in fact, facial expression is one of the most important ones to emotion recognition (Collignon et al., 2008; Massaro & Egan, 1996; Van den Stock, Righart, & de Gelder, 2007). However, in daily life, we rarely focus solely on facial expression for emotion recognition (Planalp, DeFrancisco, & Rutherford, 1996). We consider the surrounding contextual information and recognize emotions in an integrated manner: for instance, it is shown that surrounding situation and facial expression influence the recognition of emotions (Barrett, Lindquist, & Gendron, 2007; Masuda et al., 2008).

In addition, as contextual information, color influences emotion (Elliot & Maier, 2014; Minami, Nakajima, & Nakauchi, 2018). For example, Gil and Le Bigot (2015, 2016) colored the background of neutral and surprised facial expressions, whose valence was ambiguous, as green or red. They presented these stimuli to participants and asked them to identify the emotion as positive or negative. Results revealed that these facial expressions were interpreted negatively when their background was red and positively when their background was green. Thus, red might be associated with negative emotions and green with positive emotions.

Furthermore, Young, Elliot, Feltman, and Ambady (2013) indicated that color influenced the ease of detection of emotion from facial expressions. In experiment 1, they colored the background of happy and angry facial expressions as red, gray, or green and in experiment 2, they colored the background of fearful and angry facial expression as red, gray, or blue. They presented these stimuli and measured the reaction time of judgment of these emotions. Their results showed that anger was detected quickly when its background was colored as red.

However, because background color was used as a primer in the Young et al. (2013) study, it is unclear that the background color affects immediate online processing of facial expression even if the color was presented with facial expression simultaneously. There are many studies suggesting that red associates with threat or danger and showing that red facilitates the detection of specific stimuli (Elliot, 2015; Elliot, Maier, Binser, Friedman, & Pekrun, 2009; Moller, Elliot, & Maier, 2009). If so, considering that background color affects object judgment (Gil & Le Bigot, 2015; Okamura, 2017), it would conflict or promote detection of facial expression immediately. For example, it has been said that color and temperature are associated, as well as color and emotion (Morgan, Goodson, & Jones, 1975). An investigation of the association between color and temperature through a Stroop-like task found that warm-related terms were detected faster when colored in red, and cold-related terms were detected faster when colored in blue (Lorentz, Ekstrand, Gould, & Borowsky, 2016). These findings made it clear that the association between color and emotion could be investigated by a similar Stroop-like task, too. Therefore, this study adopted this paradigm to explore the association.

In addition, color and emotion are often described as associated (Buechner, Maier, Lichtenfeld, & Schwarz, 2014; Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman, & Meinhardt, 2007; Sutton & Altarriba, 2016). For example, Thorstenson, Elliot, Pazda, Perrett, and Xiao (2018) investigated the association between six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) and color in two axes (red–green and yellow–blue). Results revealed that these six emotions were consistently described in the dimensions of the two color axes, suggesting that the emotions and colors were associated with each other. Furthermore, Changizi, Zhang, and Shimojo (2006) argue that the mean of red signal was acquired through evolution. Given these, if colors associate with specific emotions, like red with anger, emotions also might facilitate or inhibit recognition of colors. A previous study about metaphor indicated that this association exists and has a bidirectional influence (Lee & Schwarz, 2012). In this study, the directionality of this association was investigated using a metaphor like “something smells fishy” meaning social suspicion. Results revealed that this metaphorical effect was bidirectional, that is, fishy smell aroused social suspicion and feeling social suspicion facilitated perceiving fishy smell. However, the directionality of the association between emotion and color was unclear. Fetterman, Robinson, and Meier (2012) examined this association by using anger- and fear-related words, coloring them in red or gray (experiment 1). They presented these words and asked participants to identify their color or emotion by immediately pressing a key. Results suggested that color had an influence on emotion identification, but emotion did not influence color identification. This study, therefore, suggested that the influence of the association between color and emotion might be unidirectional. In this study, facial expressions were used instead of emotional terms, in order to explore the directionality of this association. Considering Fetterman et al. (2012), it was predicted that although background color would affect emotion detection, facial expression would not affect background color detection.

Furthermore, due to the recent development of the social networks system, recently, the relationship between emoticons and emotion recognition has been investigated (e.g., Rahman, Islam, & Ahmed, 2017). Through these studies, it has been shown that the process of emotion recognition was different for actual facial expressions than for emoticons (Takahashi, Oishi, & Shimada, 2017). On the other hand, it has been suggested that background color influences emotion recognition from emoticons (Kato & Yamashita, 2016); if color is associated with emotion, the background color would influence the ease of detection for emotion recognition from emoticons as well as actual facial expressions. With this in mind, this study also investigated the nature of the association between color and emotion recognition from emoticons.

Experiment 1

Methods

Participants

Forty-seven Japanese university students (33 females and 14 males) took part in experiment 1. Their mean age was 20.4 years (SD = 1.55), and they consented to participate in the experiment for credit in a practical experiment class in the Psychology Department. They were inexperienced students and unfamiliar with the experimental hypothesis. Written and verbal informed consent was collected for each participant, and this study was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. One female was excluded from the analysis because she did not understand the procedure of the study, and the data of 46 participants were analyzed and reported.

Materials

The standardized facial expression pictures of happiness and anger (http://www.atr-p.com/products/face-db.html), depicting three Japanese women and men were used. In addition, six original emoticons of happiness and six emoticons of anger were used. The backgrounds of these stimuli were colored in red (LCh = 120/240/0) or green (LCh = 60/240/80). These colors were typical in Japan. In total, there were 24 photos and 24 emoticons (comprising two emotions, represented by six faces for each emotion, and two colors for each face) that served as stimuli. In addition, four photos of one male with angry and happy facial expressions and four emoticons with angry and happy expressions were used for the practice trial.

The stimuli were presented on a PC display with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels using PsychoPy ver. 1.82 (Peirce, 2007). The refresh rate of display was 60 Hz and participants observed the display from a distance of 50 cm.

Procedure

In the beginning, participants completed the face sheet, which included birthday and age. Next, they moved to another room and participated in the experiment individually. Experiments included one photo condition and one emoticon condition; all participants were exposed to both conditions, and the order of the conditions was counterbalanced. Each condition included a face trial and a color trial. In face trials, they were required to ignore the background color and judge the emotion of facial expressions as quickly and correctly as they could. In color trials, in contrast to face trials, they were required to ignore facial expression and judge the background color in the two selections. Each trial set included 4 practice trials and 24 experiment trials. In each of these, stimuli were presented once in a random order. First, instruction was presented on the display, and they started the trial by pushing the space key. In practice and experiment trials, the fixation point was displayed on the screen for 1 second and the stimulus was presented on the screen until the participants inputted their answer. The answer was inputted using the F key and the J key, and the correspondence between the key and the answer was counterbalanced.

Results

The mean accuracy is presented in Figure 1. First, a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) of face type (photo vs. emoticon), background color (red vs. green), and emotion of facial expression (happiness vs. anger) was performed for both the color trial and the face trial to investigate the differences in accuracy across face types or combinations of emotion and color. Color trial results revealed that there were no significant main effects of face type, F(1, 45) = 0.239, p = .627, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .005, background color, F(1, 45) = 2.003, p = .164, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .043, emotion, F(1, 45) = 0.671, p = .417, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .01, or all of these interactions (ps > .05). In the face trial, results revealed that the main effect of face type was significant, F(1, 45) = 8.108, p = .007, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .153; the main effect of background color, F(1, 45) = 0.338, p = .564, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .007, and the main effect of emotion, F(1, 45) = 0.011, p = .917, $η_{p}^{2}$ < .001, were not significant. Furthermore, face type × emotion interaction, F(1, 45) = 4.124, p = .048, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .084, emotion × background color interaction, F(1, 45) = 4.828, p = .033, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .097, and face type × emotion × background color interaction, F(1, 45) = 8.108, p = .007, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .153, were significant. The test of simple main effect for three-way interaction revealed that in the photo condition, the simple main effect of emotion was significant when the background was red, F(1, 45) = 5.243, p = .027, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .104, and the simple main effect of background color was significant when facial expression was angry. However, in the emoticon condition, there were no significant simple main effects (ps > .05). These results suggested that when ignoring facial expression and judging the background color, the emotion of the facial expression did not influence color recognition. When ignoring background color and judging emotion, color influenced emotion recognition, that is, red color tended to inhibit the recognition of happiness and green tended to inhibit the recognition of anger. Furthermore, importantly, the emoticon background color did not influence emotion recognition.

Figure 1.

Mean accuracy in the color and face trials in experiment 1. Error bars represent the standard error.

Next, response time was examined. Response times of wrong answers for judgment and of trials ± 2SD from participants’ mean were excluded. The mean response time is presented in Figure 2. A three-way ANOVA of face type, background color, and emotion of facial expression was performed for both color trials and face trials. In the color trials, only the main effect of background color was significant, F(1, 45) = 4.581, p = .038, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .092, and the main effects of face type, F(1, 45) = 1.087, p = .303, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .024, and emotion, F(1, 45) = 0.060, p = .809, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .001, were not significant. All of the interactions were not significant (ps > .05). In the face trial, the main effect of face type, F(1, 45) = 4.575, p = .038, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .092, and emotion, F(1, 45) = 4.927, p = .032, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .099, was significant, although the main effect of background color was not significant, F(1, 45) = 0.094, p = .761, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .002. Furthermore, the emotion × background color interaction was significant, F(1, 45) = 10.050, p = .003, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .183, and all the other interactions were not significant (ps > .05). These results suggested that, as in the results of analysis of accuracy, emotion did not influence recognition of color, and background color influenced emotion recognition from actual faces and emoticons similarly, that is, green facilitated the recognition of happiness and red facilitated the recognition of anger.

Figure 2.

Mean response time in the color and face trials in experiment 1. Error bars represent the standard error.

Discussion

In experiment 1, the association between color and emotion was investigated. In addition, it was predicted that not only for actual faces but also for emoticons, red influenced detection of anger and green influenced detection of happiness but not vice versa.

Results revealed that in terms of accuracy, background color influenced emotion recognition from actual faces but not from emoticons. However, with regard to response times, background color influenced judgments about both actual faces and emoticons. Furthermore, facial expression did not influence the recognition of color in either accuracy or response times. These results suggest that emotional facial expression did not affect color recognition. However, the background color partially influenced emotion recognition, both for actual faces and emoticons. In the results of the analysis on accuracy, color did not influence in the emoticon condition, and a happy face with green background and an angry face with red background were correctly recognized only in the actual face condition. In terms of response time, a happy face with green background and an angry face with red background were recognized quickly in both the actual face and emoticon conditions. Why are these results inconsistent? One possibility is that emotion recognition from emoticons is easier than it is from actual faces, as there is no need to consider background context when an emoticon is employed. This is supported by research findings showing that children who could not accurately infer emotion from facial expressions were more likely to attend to contextual information to refer additional information about the intended emotion (Leitzke & Pollak, 2016). Moreover, emotion recognition from emoticons was faster compared to recognition from actual faces. This result is consistent with a previous study indicating that emotion recognition from facial pictures was faster than that from actual faces (Kendall, Raffaelli, Kingstone, & Todd, 2016). This tendency was probably due to the fact that the area for detecting cues for emotion recognition was limited in emoticons (Schwarzer, Huber, & Dümmler, 2005).

Although the p-values are significant, the effect size in the experiment 1 is relatively small. Conceptual replication is, therefore, needed to explore the robustness of these results. Experiment 2 was conducted for this purpose.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 was designed using the emotions happiness and sadness and the colors yellow and blue. Recent Japanese studies suggested that happiness was associated with yellow and sadness with blue (Ikeda, 2018; Kato & Yamashita, 2016). Considering the results of experiment 1, it was predicted that the directionality of association between color and emotion would be replicated in experiment 2, that is, color influences the detection of emotion, but emotion does not influence detection of color.

Methods

Participants

Twenty-five Japanese university students and undergraduate students (18 females, seven males) took part in the experiment. Their mean age was 24.5 years (SD = 2.06), and they did not take part in experiment 1. The condition of the participants, such as their demographic characteristics and familiarity with the material, was same as experiment 1.

Materials

The standardized facial expression pictures of happiness and sadness (http://www.atr-p.com/products/face-db.html), depicting three Japanese women and men were used. In addition, six original emoticons of happiness (used in experiment 1) and six emoticons of sadness were used. The backgrounds of these stimuli were colored in yellow (LCh = 120/240/40) or blue (LCh = 120/240/160). The number of stimuli and apparatus were the same as in experiment 1.

Procedure

The procedure of experiment 2 was same as that of experiment 1.

Results

The mean accuracy is presented in Figure 3. As in experiment 1, a three-way ANOVA of face type (photo vs. emoticon), background color (blue vs. yellow), and emotion of facial expression (happiness vs. sadness) was performed for both the color trial and the face trial. The color trial results revealed that there were no significant main effects of face type, F(1, 24) = 0.138, p = .714, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .006, background color, F(1, 24) = 0.185, p = .671, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .008, emotion, F(1, 24) = 0.051, p = .824, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .002, or all of these interactions (ps > .05). In the face trial, there were no significant main effects of face type, F(1, 24) = 1.425, p = .245, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .058, background color, F(1, 24) = 4.053, p = .056, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .150, or emotion, F(1, 24) = 4.053, p = .056, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .150. None of these interactions was significant (ps > .05), with the exception of emotion × background color interaction, F(1, 24) = 11.539, p = .003, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .334. The test of simple main effect for two-way interaction revealed that when the background was yellow, happiness was detected more accurately, F(1, 24) = 10.274, p = .004, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .309, and when the facial expression was sad, the background color affected the detection of emotion, F(1, 24) = 8.603, p = .008, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .272. These results suggest that when facial expression was ignored and background color evaluated, the emotion contained in the facial expression did not influence color recognition, replicating my findings from experiment 1. When ignoring background color and judging emotion, color influenced emotion recognition in the emoticon condition, contradicting what I found in experiment 1. The reason for this inconsistency might be due to the strength of connection between color and emotion, in which case yellow and blue might be more strongly associated with emoticon-based emotions than red and green in Japan.

Figure 3.

Mean accuracy in the color and face trials in experiment 2. Error bars represent the standard error.

Next, response time was examined. Response times of wrong answers for judgment and of trials ± 2SD from participants’ mean were excluded. The mean response time is presented in Figure 4. A three-way ANOVA of face type, background color, and emotion of facial expression was performed for both color trials and face trials. In the color trials, there were no significant main effects of face type, F(1, 24) = 0.110, p = .743, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .005, background color, F(1, 24) = 0.925, p = .346, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .037, or emotion, F(1, 24) = 0.094, p = .762, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .004. None of these interactions was significant (ps > .05). In the face trial, the main effect of face type, F(1, 24) = 42.893, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .641, and emotion, F(1, 24) = 6.605, p = .017, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .216, was significant, although the main effect of background color was not significant, F(1, 24) = 0.497, p = .488, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .020. The emotion × background color interaction was significant, F(1, 24) = 43.860, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .646, but none of the other interactions was significant (ps > .05). The test of simple main effect for two-way interaction revealed that when the background was yellow, happiness was detected faster, F(1, 24) = 38.025, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .613, and background color affected the detection of emotion when facial expression was sad, F(1, 24) = 25.065, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .510, and happy, F(1, 24) = 27.796, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .537. Given these results, experiment 2 replicated the main results of experiment 1, that is, the unidirectionality of emotion–color association.

Figure 4.

Mean response time in the color and face trials in experiment 2. Error bars represent the standard error.

Discussion

In experiment 2, conceptual replication for experiment 1 was implemented by using happiness—yellow and sadness—blue associations. The results show that background color influences the judgment of emotions, but emotions do not influence the judgment of color. In addition, emoticon emotions were detected earlier than real face emotions, and color was detected earlier than emotion. Experiment 2 replicated the results of experiment 1. Although the effect size was relatively small, the unidirectionality of emotion–color association is robust. The larger effect size of experiment 2 when compared to that of experiment 1 suggests that the emotion associations for blue and yellow are stronger than for red and green in Japan.

General discussion

In this study, I conducted two experiments to investigate the association between color and emotion. As predicted, the association was found to be unidirectional, that is, color influences emotion detection, but emotion does not influence color detection. This suggests that when we detect emotion from facial expressions, we tend to consider contextual information such as color to reach a conclusion about others’ inner emotions. In contrast, our perception of the context is not swayed by our recognition of a particular emotion. These findings make sense when one considers that authentic emotions can be hidden behind fake expressions (Matsumoto, 1990), and that contextual information is crucial to infer someone’s authentic emotion (Aviezer, Bentin, Dudarev, & Hassin, 2011; Carroll & Russell, 1996; Nakamura, Buck, & Kenny, 1990). However, emoticons are static icons (Takahashi et al., 2017) without the ability to hide emotions, rendering contextual information irrelevant. As for color recognition, contextual information such as facial expression does not interfere with the ability to recognize authentic color. So, facial expression might not influence color recognition.

Studies on metaphor suggest another explanation, as bidirectionality (e.g., Lee & Schwarz, 2012) and unidirectionality (Fetterman et al., 2012) are both reported as argued in the introduction. However, for emotion and color, this association might be unidirectional, that is, color (concrete) might have an influence on emotion (abstract) but not vice versa (Fetterman et al., 2012). Indeed, subjective feelings of happiness or sadness influenced brightness perception (Zhang, Zuo, Erskine, & Hu, 2016), but this emotion was aroused in the mind, not perceived. So, it is suggested that internal emotion might influence one’s perception, but perception of external emotional expression does not influence one’s perception. Further studies must be conducted in order to explore this association further.

This study investigated the directionality of the association between emotion recognition and color, and whether this association was observed in the case of emoticons. The results revealed that emotion was associated with color not only in actual facial expressions but also in emoticons, and this association was unidirectional, that is, emotion did not influence color recognition. However, the study holds a few limitations. Firstly, this study only used prototype colors and did not control lower dimensional characteristics. A finer-grained investigation might give more insight on the matter because color characteristics affect emotion (Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994). Secondly, the origin of the association between color and emotion was not clear. Previous studies suggested that these associations are both innate and acquired through learning in daily experience (Elliot et al., 2007), and the latter may vary across different cultures (Ikeda, 2018). In the future, the association between color and emotion in various cultures must be investigated to reveal whether it is innate or learned in order to elucidate the origin and nature of the association between color and emotion.

Footnotes

Article Notes

References

Aviezer

Bentin

Dudarev

Hassin

R. R.

(2011). The automaticity of emotional face-context integration. Emotion, 11(6), 1406–1414. doi:10.1037/a0023578

Bänziger

Grandjean

Scherer

K. R.

(2009). Emotion recognition from expressions in face, voice, and body: The Multimodal Emotion Recognition Test (MERT). Emotion, 9(5), 691–704. doi:10.1037/a0017088

Barrett

L. F.

Lindquist

K. A.

Gendron

(2007). Language as context for the perception of emotion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(8), 327–332. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.06.003

Buechner

V. L.

Maier

M. A.

Lichtenfeld

Schwarz

(2014). Red—Take a closer look. PLoS ONE, 9, e108111. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108111

Carroll

J. M.

Russell

J. A.

(1996). Do facial expressions signal specific emotions? Judging emotion from the face in context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(2), 205–218. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.2.205

Changizi

M. A.

Zhang

Shimojo

(2006). Bare skin, blood and the evolution of primate colour vision. Biology Letters, 2(2), 217–221. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0440

Collignon

Girard

Gosselin

Roy

Saint-Amour

Lassonde

Lepore

(2008). Audio-visual integration of emotion expression. Brain Research, 1242, 126–135. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.04.023

Elliot

A. J.

(2015). Color and psychological functioning: A review of theoretical and empirical work. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 368. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00368

Elliot

A. J.

Maier

M. A.

(2014). Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95–120. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035

10.

Elliot

A. J.

Maier

M. A.

Binser

M. J.

Friedman

Pekrun

(2009). The effect of red on avoidance behavior in achievement contexts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(3), 365–375. doi:10.1177/0146167208328330

11.

Elliot

A. J.

Maier

M. A.

Moller

A. C.

Friedman

Meinhardt

(2007). Color and psychological functioning: The effect of red on performance attainment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(1), 154–168. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.1.154

12.

Fetterman

A. K.

Robinson

M. D.

Meier

B. P.

(2012). Anger as “seeing red”: Evidence for a perceptual association. Cognition and Emotion, 26(8), 1445–1458. doi:10.1080/02699931.2012.673477

13.

Gil

Le Bigot

(2015). Grounding context in face processing: Color, emotion, and gender. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 322. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00322

14.

Gil

Le Bigot

(2016). Color and emotion: Children also associate red with negative valence. Developmental Science, 19(6), 1087–1094. doi:10.1111/desc.12382

15.

Ikeda

(2018). The effect of background color on emotion recognition from facial expression. Japanese Journal of Research on Emotions, 26(1), 19–26. doi:10.4092/jsre.26.1_19

16.

Kato

Yamashita

(2016). Effects of colors on emotional recognition from facial expressions by line drawing. Journal of Japanese Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics, 28(2), 576–582. doi:10.3156/jsoft.28.576

17.

Kendall

L. N.

Raffaelli

Kingstone

Todd

R. M.

(2016). Iconic faces are not real faces: Enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 1(1), 1–14. doi:10.1186/s41235-016-0021-8

18.

Lee

S. W. S.

Schwarz

(2012). Bidirectionality, mediation, and moderation of metaphorical effects: The embodiment of social suspicion and fishy smells. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(5), 737–749. doi:10.1037/a0029708

19.

Leitzke

B. T.

Pollak

S. D.

(2016). Developmental changes in the primacy of facial cues for emotion recognition. Developmental Psychology, 52(4), 572–581. doi:10.1037/a0040067

20.

Lorentz

Ekstrand

Gould

Borowsky

(2016). Red-hot: How colour and semantic temperature processing interact in a Stroop-like paradigm. Visual Cognition, 24(2), 173–181. doi:10.1080/13506285.2016.1183742

21.

Massaro

D. W.

Egan

P. B.

(1996). Perceiving affect from the voice and the face. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(2), 215–221. doi:10.3758/BF03212421

22.

Masuda

Ellsworth

P. C.

Mesquita

Leu

Tanida

Van de Veerdonk

(2008). Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(3), 365–381. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.3.365

23.

Matsumoto

(1990). Cultural similarities and differences in display rules. Motivation and Emotion, 14(3), 195–214. doi:10.1007/BF00995569

24.

Minami

Nakajima

Nakauchi

(2018). Effects of face and background color on facial expression perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01012

25.

Moller

A. C.

Elliot

A. J.

Maier

M. A.

(2009). Basic hue-meaning associations. Emotion, 9(6), 898–902. doi:10.1037/a0017811

26.

Morgan

Goodson

Jones

(1975). Age differences in the associations between felt temperatures and color choices. The American Journal of Psychology, 88(1), 125–130. doi:10.2307/1421671

27.

Nakamura

Buck

Kenny

D. A.

(1990). Relative contributions of expressive behavior and contextual information to the judgment of the emotional state of another. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(5), 1032–1039. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.5.1032

28.

Okamura

(2017). The influence of the background color “Red” on the appraisal of pictures. International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies, 4(2), 1–9. doi:10.17220/ijpes.2017.02.001

29.

Peirce

J. W.

(2007). PsychoPy-Psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 162(1-2), 8–13. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2006.11.017

30.

Planalp

DeFrancisco

V. L.

Rutherford

(1996). Varieties of cues to emotion in naturally occurring situations. Cognition and Emotion, 10(2), 137–154. doi:10.1080/026999396380303

31.

Rahman

Islam

Ahmed

M. H.

(2017). Detecting emotion from text and emoticon. London Journal of Research in Computer Science and Technology, 17(3), 9–13.

32.

Schwarzer

Huber

Dümmler

(2005). Gaze behavior in analytical and holistic face processing. Memory and Cognition, 33(2), 344–354. doi:10.3758/BF03195322

33.

Sutton

T. M.

Altarriba

(2016). Color associations to emotion and emotion-laden words: A collection of norms for stimulus construction and selection. Behavior Research Methods, 48(2), 686–728. doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0598-8

34.

Takahashi

Oishi

Shimada

(2017). Is ☺ smiling? Cross-cultural study on recognition of emoticon’s emotion. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48(10), 1578–1586. doi:10.1177/0022022117734372

35.

Thorstenson

C. A.

Elliot

A. J.

Pazda

A. D.

Perrett

D. I.

Xiao

(2018). Emotion-color associations in the context of the face. Emotion, 18(7), 1032–1042. doi:10.1037/emo0000358

36.

Valdez

Mehrabian

(1994). Effects of color on emotions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(4), 394–409. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.123.4.394

37.

Van den Stock

Righart

de Gelder

(2007). Body expressions influence recognition of emotions in the face and voice. Emotion, 7(3), 487–494. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.487

38.

Young

S. G.

Elliot

A. J.

Feltman

Ambady

(2013). Red enhances the processing of facial expressions of anger. Emotion, 13(3), 380–384. doi:10.1037/a0032471

39.

Zhang

Zuo

Erskine

(2016). Feeling light or dark? Emotions affect perception of brightness. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 47, 107–111. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.05.007