Short Stuff: Color Psychology | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

What this episode is about

This discussion explores color psychology, delving into how individual experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal emotions shape our reactions to colors. It highlights that while there are broad trends in color associations, the psychological responses to colors are inherently personal, with marketers often leveraging these insights to influence consumer behavior.

Key takeaways

• Color is a personal lens, shaped by culture, age, and past experiences—no universal meaning here!
• Did you know that mourning colors differ worldwide? Black in the West, white in the East—cultural color cues are fascinating!
• Color drenching: where everything matches to create cozy harmony. Warning: potential oppression or stylish sanctuary!
• Despite similarities in warm vs. cold color perceptions, emotional responses vary wildly by culture. Who knew color could be divisive?
• From bear chases to childhood memories—color associations are as unique as fingerprints, shaping our feelings in subtle ways.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Josh Clark (Host) · 7 min speaking
• Chuck Bryant (Host) · 5 min speaking
• Jerry (Guest)

What is discussed, and when

1. 3:00 – 6:00: American, Japan, Ireland
2. 6:00 – 9:00: Crayola

Notable quotes from "Short Stuff: Color Psychology | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

• That color means like another good example is associating luck with green and you can actually trace that back to Ireland being considered the emerald isle and leprechauns being associated with luck.

  about Ireland · at 3:43

• Where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered good and orange and red and purple bad.

  about American · at 5:10

• We do on Stuff You Should Know, we're not going to talk about all eight. Yeah, we're just going to hit some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk a little bit about what most people feel.

  about Crayola · at 6:42

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Companies & orgs

• Crayola — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at 6:06
  Mentioned in the context of color psychology and its impact on marketing and consumer behavior.

Concepts & topics

• American — Concept · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 4:57
  Discussed in the context of cultural differences in color perception and psychology.

Places & events

• Japan — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 4:57
  Mentioned as a comparative example in discussions about cultural differences in color psychology.
  Found that American and Japanese their concepts of warm and cold colors are about the same. but in Japan, blue and green are perceived as good and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad.
• Ireland — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 3:51
  Referenced in the context of cultural symbolism of colors, specifically green and luck.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:04 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And uh Jerry's here. And I just realized that I opened this like a regular episode, but it's not because Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry, which makes this a short stuff.

0:22 That's right. Uh and we are talking about color psychology today. you put this one together and I think it's a pretty good one because you know it seems sort of obvious to say that people have reactions to color. Uh and it is but there's there's a lot more that goes into it um beyond just like seeing a color and having a feeling like where you were raised, what kind of culture you were raised in, maybe how old you are, maybe how you're feeling at the time, uh specific experiences with that kind of color. And there's a field that studies this called color psychology.

0:55 Yeah. Um, so it's an interesting field in that it's very quickly figured out there's no universality to color psychology because of all of those factors that you just mentioned. um it's a very personal response, but the fact that people do have emotional um and psychological responses to color, which means that it's just totally symbolic um to them. That that is worth investigating and diving into. And then also there are some broad strokes especially when you're talking about a large culture, a bunch of uh societies that form an even bigger culture um that you can manipulate to sell things to those people if you want to using color as a marketer advertiser.

1:43 Yeah. I mean a lot of thought like beyond just your own home or whatever, how how you want to paint your room. Uh which by the way we're going to color drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this?

1:54 Uh no. Color drenching is when you paint everything in there. Oh, neat. The same color like ceiling, trim, doors everything.

2:03 What about like in lamps and stuff too or just the stuff that's fastened down? No, no, no. Just like walls, ceiling, trim, doors, every everything you would normally paint. You paint it all one color and it's it sounds oppressive, but it's really kind of awesome and it seems like a a trend.

2:18 That sounds really cool. Are you doing it in matte? It seems like a matte would be best for something like that.

2:23 Yeah, probably matte. Uh maybe semig gloss, but it'll be um I think it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do.

2:29 That's cool, man. Do you know what color you're going to get? Probably like a a deep green, something kind of dark.

2:35 Okay. I I used to have um back in the 90s, back when burgundy and dark blue and Oh, yeah. Hunter green were all um in fashion. I put them all together

2:46 in my bedroom, and it looked knockout. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll let you know how it goes.

2:52 Okay. I'll just I'll just nudge you in bed and say, "What do you think?" Perfect.

2:58 Uh, all right. So, we were talking about the obvious thing like just painting your room or something, but you know, a lot of thought goes into color design for logos and like the lobby of the big corporation or what kind of color the the nurs's uniform should be or the kids hospital room should be. Like that's all color psychology

3:17 for sure. Um there's also color symbolism too where your culture basically says hey um we believe wearing black is a sign of morning like if you're in mourning wear black if you go to another culture typically in the east they'll say no you wear white when you're in mourning right so there's not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors it's all what one culture decides um that color means like another good example is associating luck with green and you can actually trace that back to Ireland being considered the emerald isle and leprechauns being associated with luck.

3:56 So through a bunch of cultural convolutions, the west associates green with good luck, right? That you would not find that in other other cultures, right? So there is like a a real culturally bound aspect to it. But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated to where if you were chased by a bear in the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to like the color green very much or you're not going to like brown because that's reminds you of the color of the grizzly bear. Whereas somebody else would be like, um, I was raised on a farm and everything was brown and I loved it so I love the color brown. It gets like that detailed and that granular. Um the upshot of the whole thing is that colors can affect us and that in and of itself you just it's so we just know that but if you step back and actually think about what's going on it's actually kind of mind-blowing especially in the ways it

4:49 affects us. Yeah for sure. Um they have done cross-cultural studies about you know how it is around the world. Uh they found that American and Japanese their concepts of warm and cold colors are about the same. Uh but in Japan, blue and green are uh perceived as good and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad.

5:10 Where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered good and orange and red and purple bad.

5:15 Yeah. And one thing I wanted to mention about the the morning colors is uh we have a uh an African-American church right around the block from us and they have had their fair share of funerals over the years. And a lot of these I've seen everybody wearing purple and I wondered if that was a thing in the black community or if it was just something particular to to the person like that was their favorite color.

5:39 I don't know. But I do know that purple and gold and white and black are all depending on the culture um appropriate morning wear.

5:48 Yeah. I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write in and tell me because I never feel like I can just walk up to the gathering and say like, "Hey, is was was this person into purple or what's the deal?"

5:58 Yeah. Not the right time. I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to ask you. Yeah.

6:04 Um, you want to take a break and uh come back and talk about the Crayola eight pack of colors?

6:11 Let's do it. Wow. Wow. All right. Josh promised now that we're back to talk about the Crayola 8, but as we do on Stuff You Should Know, we're not going to talk about all eight. Yeah,

6:45 we're just going to hit some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go and start with red. I think we should talk about red because that's the color that kind of has the the strongest reaction uh usually out of people because red is just a very big bold brave choice in a lot of cases. Uh they say if you have a red car, you're going to get pulled over more often by cops. Uh they report pe feelings of strength when you wear red or courage or aggression. Uh it can actually increase your heart rate and energy level. Uh and obviously red is why you know you paint um stop signs red. Uh because it's a real eye grabber or um a warning label is red because it'll catch your eye,

7:27 right? Um and uh another one I it depends on the shade um or I guess the saturation or value.

7:37 Um but I like orange sometimes. Apparently, a lot of people can't stand orange. And I get that because there are colors that I can't stand.

7:46 Like, like what? I I really don't like magenta. What's magenta? Is that like a purple?

7:51 Yeah, it's like a reddish purple. Like like redish purple. What's your favorite color?

7:57 Um blue often like a robin's egg blue, but also I like um royal blue is kind of nice. Um dark blue. the bluer blues rather than the darker blues I usually kind of lean toward. But um yeah, I also like pastels.

8:14 Oh yeah, sure. You've you've got your a nice stable of like pastel sweatshirts and things.

8:19 I do. Uh I tend to depend on the season. I really Oh, yeah. Good point. You know, kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and and sort of forest greens in the fall and winter. Uh, and I brighten up a bit, but I I definitely love greens and browns and uh hues of orange the most, I think.

8:39 I see. Yeah. But which one are you talking about? Yellow. No, orange. Well, we just kind of finished orange. I mean, it's just all over the place. I think there's just so many different weird associations. This list says flamboyance, energy, comfort, warmth. I mean, you can't really put four different things that are less associated with one another together.

9:00 Yeah, for sure. Um I I do like black. I like wearing black things. I always have. Uh black is beautiful. Uh black is powerful. Uh authoritiveness comes to mind obviously like strength. Um it can be overwhelming for a lot of people. Like usually painting walls black is I mean that's a that's a big choice. I've got a couple of black black walls in my house. Like my office I have a I have one wall that's black.

9:23 Yeah. So like um but there are many shades within the black like when you go to pick out paint colors. Black is not just black. Um, and obviously, you know, in like westerns, the black hat symbolized good. The white hat symbolized, uh, like the, you know, the bad guy and the good guy.

9:38 And in hacking, too. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's true. Um, like there's black hat hackers and white hat hackers.

9:45 Yeah. Um, I we have to at least talk about yellow. Yeah, let's do it. This to me is like I think it's the most all over um color because people like yellow, but it's associated with so many different things. like we we call um people who are cowards, they're called yellow, especially if you're an oldtimey person. Um there's also like this idea that you might cry longer in a yellow room, which I cannot find anything to actually back that up. It's almost just become legendary. But I guarantee there was some study that said that at some point.

10:20 But it's also considered very cheerful, right? I mean, yellow is like the color of the smiley face and the sun. And it's it's just it depends on again not just like your experiences with yellow or what your culture says yellow is, but your mood that day.

10:36 Even more important though is there's not just one yellow. Like you talked about how there's all these different shades of black.

10:43 Yeah. All the colors have different saturations, just how how colorful they are. um their value, the brightness, the hues or the actual different colors. Like all of these things, like a a a pale cream pastel yellow is going to make you feel differently than a neon yellow is. The neon yellow is going to make you run out and buy a Mountain Dew. The pastel creamy yellow is going to make you want to sit down and have tea.

11:11 Yeah, agreed. Uh, I got I mean I think the rest of these people people can go do more color research if they're if they're planning their wardrobe or they're painting their house or something.

11:22 Yes. Uh, my advice is to, you know, you got to get those small little tester sizes and just throw a little on the wall and see what you think and then look at it in a bunch of different light, regular daylight.

11:33 Uh, because that that really can change the the hue of a color is what kind of light you're using.

11:37 Flashlight, your power may go out at some point. You want to make sure it looks good in that, too. Yeah, for sure.

11:43 Uh, you got anything else then? I got nothing else. All right, everybody. Short stuff is out.

11:51 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Short Stuff: Color Psychology | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Chuck Bryant (Host), Jerry (Guest).

What is "Short Stuff: Color Psychology | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

This discussion explores color psychology, delving into how individual experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal emotions shape our reactions to colors. It highlights that while there are broad trends in color associations, the psychological responses to colors are inherently personal, with marketers often leveraging these insights to influence consumer behavior.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including American, Crayola, Japan, Ireland. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Short Stuff: Color Psychology | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 12 min; the transcript is about 2,217 words in 45 timestamped sections.

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