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Short Stuff: Color Psychology · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here. And I just realized that I
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: open this like a regular episode, but it's not because
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: which makes this a short stuff.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: That's right, And we were talking about color psychology today.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: You put this one together, and I think it's a
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: pretty good one because you know, it seems sort of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: obvious to say that people have reactions to color, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: it is, but there's a lot more that goes into
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: it beyond just like seeing a color and having a
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: feeling like where you were raised, what kind of culture
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: you were raised in, maybe how old you are, maybe
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: how you're feeling at the time specific experiences with that
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: kind of color. And there's a field that studies this
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: called color psychology.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's an interesting feel in that it's very
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: quickly figured out. There's no universality to color psychology because
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of all of those factors that you just mentioned. It's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a very personal response, but the fact that people do
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: have emotional and psychological response is to color, which means
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: that it's just totally symbolic to them that is worth
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: investigating and diving into. And then also there are some
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: broad strokes, especially when you're talking about a large culture,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a bunch of societies that form an even bigger culture
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: that you can manipulate to sell things to those people
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: if you want to using color as a marketer advertiser.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of thought, like beyond just
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: your own home or whatever, how you want to paint
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: your room, which, by the way, we're going to color
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Color drenching is when you paint everything in there, oh,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: neat the same color, like ceiling, trim, doors, everything.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: What about in lamps and stuff too, or just the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: stuff that's fastened down.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, just like wall, ceiling, trim, doors, everything
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: you would normally paint, you painted all one color. And
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: it sounds oppressive, but it's really kind of awesome and
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: it seems like a trend.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: That sounds really cool. Are you doing it? And Matt,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: it seems like a Matt would be best for something
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably, Matt, maybe semigloss, but it'll be I think
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: That's cool man, Do you know what color you're going
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to get?
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Probably like a deep green, something kind of dark.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, I used to have back in the nineties, back
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: when burgundy and dark blue and oh yeah, hunter green
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: or all in fashion. I put them all together in
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: my bedroom and it looks knockout awesome. Yeah.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll let you know how it goes. Okay, I'll
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I'll just nudge you in bed and say, what do
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: you think.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Perfect?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: All right, So we were talking about the be a
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: thing like just painting a room or something. But you know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of thought goes into color design for logos
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: and like the lobby of the big corporation or what
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: kind of color the nurse's uniform should be or the
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: kid's hospital room should be. Like that's all color psychology.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: For sure. There's also color symbolism too, where your culture
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: basically says, hey, we believe wearing black as a sign
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: of mourning, Like if you're in mourning, wear black. If
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you go to another culture, typically in the East, they'll say, no,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you wear white when you're in mourning. Right, So there's
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors. It's all
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what one culture decides that color means. Like another good
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: example is associating luck with green, and you can actually
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: trace that back to Ireland being considered the Emerald isle
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: leprechauns being associated with luck. So through a bunch of
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: cultural convolutions, the West associates green with good luck. Right
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: that you would not find that in other cultures. Right,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: So there is like a real culturally bound aspect to it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to where if you were chased by a bear in
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: like the color green very much, or you're not gonna
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: like brown because that reminds you of the color of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the grizzly bear, where somebody else would be like, I
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: was raised on a farm and everything was brown and
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I love it, so I love the color brown. It
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: gets like that detailed in that granular The upshot of
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is that colors can't affect us, and
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: that in and of itself, you just it's so, we
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: just know that, But if you step back and actually
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: think about what's going on, it's actually kind of mind blowing,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: especially in the ways it affects us.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, they have done cross cultural studies about,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: you know, how it is around the world. They found
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: that American Japanese the concepts of warm and colors are
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: about the same. But in Japan blue and green are
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: perceived as good and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: good and orange and red and purple bad. Yeah, And
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: one thing I wanted to mention about the mourning colors
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: is we have an African American church right around the
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: block from US, and they have had their fair share
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: of funerals over the years, and a lot of these
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: I've seen everybody wearing purple, and I wondered if that
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: was a thing in the black community or if it
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: was just something particular to the person, like that was
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: their favorite color.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I do know that purple and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: gold and white and black are all depending on the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: culture appropriate mourning where.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: in and tell me, because I never feel like I
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: can just walk up to the gathering and say like, Hey,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: was this person into purple or what's the deal? Yeah,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: not the right time.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: ask you, Yeah, you want to take a break and
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: come back and talk about the Crayola eight pack of colors.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Let's do it, all, right, Josh, I promised now that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: we're back to talk about the Crayola eight But as
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: we do on stuff, you should know we're not going
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: to talk about all eight We're just going to hit
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and start with red. I think we should talk about
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: red because that's the color that kind of has the
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: strongest reaction usually out of people, because red is just
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: a very big, bold, brave choice. In a lot of cases,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: they say if you have a red car, you're gonna
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: get pulled over more often by cops. They report feelings
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of strength when you wear red, or courage or aggression.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It can actually increase your heart rate and energy level.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And obviously red is why you know you paint stop
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: signs red because it's a real eye grabber or a
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: warning label is red because it'll catch your eye right.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: And another one, I it depends on the shade or
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I guess the saturation or value, but I like orange.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Sometimes apparently a lot of people can't stand orange, and
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I get that because there are colors that I can't stand,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Like what, I really don't like magenta?
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: What's magenta? Is that like a purple?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a reddish purple, like like redish purple.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: What's your favorite color?
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Blue? Often like a roe's egg blue. But also I
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: like royal blues, kind of nice dark blue, the bluer
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: blues rather than the darker blues. I usually kind of
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: lean toward. But yeah, I also like pastels.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure, you've got your a nice stable of
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: like pastel sweatshirts and things.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I tend to depend on the season. I really, you know,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: sort of forest greens in the fall and winter and
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I brighten up a bit. But I definitely love greens
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and browns and hues of orange the most, I think.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I see, Yeah, but which one are you talking about?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Yellow? No? Orange?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Well, we just kind of finished orange. I mean it's
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: just all over the place, I think. Yeah, there's just
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: so many different weird associations. This list says flamboyant, energy, comfort, warmth.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't really put four different things that
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: are less associated with one another together.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I do like black. I like wearing
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: black things, always have. Black is beautiful, Black is powerful.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Authoritativeness comes to mind obviously, like strength, it can be
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: overwhelming for a lot of people. Like usually painting walls
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: black is I mean, that's a that's a big choice.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I've got a couple of black black walls in my house,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Like my office, I have a I have one wall
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: that's black. Oh yeah, so like, but there are many
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: shades within the black, like when you go to pick
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: out paint colors, black is not just black. And obviously
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: you know, in like westerns, the black hat symbolized good,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: the white hat symbolized like the you know, the bad
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: guy and the good guy.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And in hacking too, Oh okay, yeah it's true, like
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: there's black hat hackers and white hat hackers. Yeah, I
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: we have to at least talk about yellow.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: This to me is like I think it's the most
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: all over color because people like yellow, but it's associated
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: with so many different things. Like we call people who
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: are cowards, they're called yellow, especially if you're an old
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: timey person. There's also like this idea that you might
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: cry longer in a yellow room, which I cannot find
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: anything to actually back that up. It's almost just become legendary,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: but I guarantee there's some study that said that at
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: some point. But it's also considered very cheerful, right. I mean,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: yellow is like the color of the smiley face and
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the sun, and it's just it depends on again, not
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: just like your experiences with yellow or what your culture
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: says yellow is, but your mood that day. Even more important, though,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: is there's not just one yellow like you talked about
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: how there's all these different shades of black. Yeah, all
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the colors have different saturations, just how colorful they are,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: their value, the brightness, the hues, or the actual different colors,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: like all of these things, Like a pale cream pastel
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: yellow is going to make you feel different than a
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: neon yellow is. Yeah, neon yellow is going to make
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: you run out and buy a mountain dew. The pasto
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: creamy yellow is going to make you want to sit
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: down and have tea.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed, h I gott I mean I think the
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: rest of these people, people can go do more color
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: research if they're planning their wardrobe or they're painting their
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: house or something. Yes, my advice is to you know,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: you got to get those small, little testra sizes and
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: just throw a little on the wall and see what
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you think. And then look at it in a bunch
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: of different light, regular daylight, because that really can change
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: the hue of a color.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Is what kind of light you're using flashlight? Your power
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: may go out at some point, you want to make
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: sure it looks good in that too. Yeah, for sure,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: you got anything.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Else, then I got nothing else?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, short, Stuff is out.
• 11:51
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• 11:54
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• 11:58
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