The document discusses color psychology and how color may influence human mood and behavior. It presents three main ideas on how color affects mood: 1) personal opinions and cultural associations with colors, 2) biological and physiological reactions, and 3) a combination of learned and innate factors. It then outlines a study to test the hypothesis that colors can influence mood by having students rate how different colors make them feel.

1. Introduction
Psychology is often known as “the scientific investigation of mental processes (thinking,
remembering, feeling, etc.) and behavior.
Color psychology is the study of the influence of the color on human behavior and
feelings. For example red represents danger or romance, yellow and orange represent
warmth and green represents ecological issues etc.
General model of color psychology
The general model of color psychology relies on six basic principles.
Color can carry specific meaning.
Color meaning is either based in learned meaning or biologically innate meaning.
The perception of a color causes evaluation automatically by the person perceiving.
The evaluation process forces color motivated behavior.
Color usually exerts its influence automatically.
Color meaning and effect has to do with context as well.
Colors may just seem simple and unimportant, but they affect our daily lives more than
we may know. If someone is feeling angry, it could just be because they’re angry, or it
could be perhaps that they are surrounded by or looking at the color red. That’s right!
People’s moods can change just because they are looking at different colors! So we need
to look whether or not colors affect our moods and life in our day to day activities.
Different cultures report different associations for certain colors. In Asia, mourners
wear white. In India, brides wear red. In the United States, brides wear white, and
black is the color of mourning.

2. Purpose of the Study
• Exploratory study because not much research has been done in this
area, scientists have not yet been able to exactly define the pattern of
affects due to colors.
Type of Investigation
• Causal, because we are looking on the cause-effect relationship of
moods with colors and how colors cause and effect the changing
moods.

3. Extent of researcher interference
• Moderate, we will carry out a survey, question students of different age
groups and then compile, analyze and interpret the results.
Study Setting
• Non-Contrived and a field experiment, the research will be carried out
in natural conditions and is a field experiment because we want to
determine the cause-and-effect relationship between color and mood.

4. Analysis
• There are three ideas about color psychology in these sources, and they
all say that color affects one’s mood. They differ based on what factors
influence the effects of color, such as culture, opinion, and what goes on
inside one’s body. One of the three ideas is that color affects mood
based on one’s personal opinions. For example, if a person dislikes the
color pink, he may associate pink with hate. Another idea states that
color affects mood based on one’s culture. For example, someone from
the U.S. may think of the color green when referring to envy, while
people in Japan think of yellow in connection with wanting what
someone else has. However, the majority of the sources consulted say
that color affects mood by influencing what goes on inside of people.
For example, seeing the color blue releases calming chemicals, this in
turn makes one calm. Also, because yellow is the hardest color for the
eye to focus on, people may become irritated when looking at yellow,
and it is a proven fact that babies cry most in yellow nurseries. These
theories do not seem to have much in common.

5. Developing Hypothesis
• Colors are everywhere; we cannot imagine our lives without colors. But to
know how much influence colors have on our everyday life and mood, we
develop a hypothesis so that we can test and interpret the results.
Null hypothesis: “colors can affect and change one’s mood”
Alternating hypothesis: “colors cannot affect or change one’s mood”
Variables:
• Dependant variable: Mood
Independent variable: Color
Moderating Variable: Cultural background, age and gender.

6. Methodology or Measures
• In order to test ideas about how color affects one’s mood (color
psychology) we will test thirty students (fifteen girls and fifteen boys)
on how the colors green, blue, black, yellow, red, pink, and brown
make them feel. The students will mark the feeling that each color
makes them feel, according to the choices shown on the survey below.
Data Collection
• Our data collection is based on a survey, which includes
the questionnaire. In the questionnaire we will gave a color
and according to that color we asked how they perceive
that specific color and what do they feel about it.