Study on Color Symbolism for Universal Design (I)

Symbolism of Colors and Words in Daily Living Activities of Young People

Abstract

  For the effective utilization of color in universal design, it was thought that commonality exists in color symbolism tacitly felt by most people. Therefore, a study was conducted on the symbolism of colors and words in younger people's daily activities. A total of 100 males and females in their teens or twenties were used as subjects. A total of 200 test words including nouns, verbs, and adjectives relating to daily activities were chosen and presented to the subjects. Participants were asked to choose a color from a 71-color chart and associate it with the respective words.
  For 61 of 200 words tested, 20％ or more subjects chose the same color and word association. The most frequently chosen associated color was blue, followed by red and orange. The general tendency was for men to choose yellow and women to choose red. These vivid tones were selected by one-third of subjects and their selectivity was high for high-chroma colors. For antonyms, a combination of red and blue, not complementary colors on the hue circle, was most frequently chosen. This demonstrated a remarkably high rank correlation coefficient between men and women, and the respective colors associated with many words were generally the same among young people.