Question 7- Describe And Evaluate Palmer's Evt Of Colour Preference

Question 1

What is EVT?

Answer 1

-EVT stands for Ecological Valence Theory

-States that colour aesthetics are based on object aesthetics
•colour preferences are related to people’s emotional responses to coloured environmental objects rather than biological underpinnings
~”colour preferences arise from people’s average affective responses to colour-associated objects”

-Based on weight-affective valence estimates (WAVES), which looks at the colour-object associations, the object valence ratings and object-colour match ratings

Question 2

Palmer (2010)

Answer 2

-Results show that PPs prefer colours that have strong associations with objects they like and dislike colours they have strong associations with objects they dislike

• People like blue because of the sky and clear water
• People dislike brown because it reminds them of rotten food and crap

Question 3

Comparable to evolutionary/behavioural theories

Answer 3

-Humphrey (1976)
•Colour preferences arise from the signals the colours produce, e.g. avoid or approach

-Hulbert and Ling (2007)
•The colour vision system adapted to improve performance on evolutionary important behavioural tasks, and genetic tuning optimises behaviourally significant discriminations which resulted in preferences for the colours of objects against the colours of the background
~e.g. females finding red berries against green leaves, which is why many females like the colour red

Question 4

Comparisons to evolutionary theories

Answer 4

-Similarities:
•Suggests colour preferences are fundamentally adaptive
~people are more likely to survive and reproduce if they are attracted to good colour objects and avoid bad coloured objects, as long as these are advantageous/disadvantageous to the organism’s survival

-Different:
•Evolutionary suggests colour preference is more hard-wired into DNA
•EVT suggests the organisms can individually learn the colour preferences instead of being more hard-wired. This seems more practical

Question 5

Colour Emotions

Answer 5

-Ou et al (2004)

•Colour preferences are based on whether the colour produces positive emotions when observing the colour

Question 6

Comparisons with colour emotions

Answer 6

-Similar:
•Both suggest colour preference is related to positive emotions derived from the colours which then contributes to how well liked the colour is

-Different:
•EVT tries to go one step further by trying to explain why the individuals like the colours and why some produce more positive emotions, e.g. by suggesting preferences are also due to associations

Question 7

EVT good…

Answer 7

-By combining the theories, EVT can predict colour preferences better than any other theory, as well as linking aesthetic perception of colour to aesthetic perception of objects

Question 8

EVT bad?…

Answer 8

-Does not look at other factors, such an uniqueness of colours

-Taylor and Franklin (2012):
•Replicated findings of Palmer (2010)
•Also found PPs preferred colours that were associated with few objects and disliked colours associated with more objects
~Could this be related to redundancy in Berlyne’s (1974) theory?
~This may be something to be taken into consideration in EVT