The more school spirit a UC Berkeley student has, the less they will favor the colors red and white – Stanford University’s colors – according to an ongoing study by UC Berkeley researchers, which found that people’s color preferences are linked to their experiences.
As part of research investigating why people like the colors they do, UC Berkeley psychology professor Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss, graduate student in psychology, found a connection between school spirit and school colors, findings that are currently under review by the campus department of psychology.
In April, the researchers published a more general study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about how certain aspects of people’s lives impact their perception of different colors. Researchers are now focusing on more idiosyncratic experiences associated with colors. For example, if a person has fond memories of their sister and her pink bedroom, they will feel more positively about the color pink.
“As a lab we’re very interested in aesthetic response as a dimension of human experience,” Schloss said. “We started the study after looking at the colors that were rated. People liked dark greens over lighter shades of green and dark reds over lighter shades of red — why?”
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