Short Stuff: Color Psychology

0:00Chuck Bryant:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:38Chuck Bryant:1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:11Chuck Bryant:Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here. And I just realized that I opened this like a regular episode, but it's not, because Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry, which makes this a short stuff.

1:29Josh Clark:That's right. And we were talking about color psychology today. You put this one together, and I think it's a pretty good one because it seems sort of obvious to say that people have reactions to color, and it is. But there's a lot more that goes into it beyond just seeing a color and having a feeling, like where you were raised, what kind of culture you were raised in, maybe how old you are, maybe how you're feeling at the time, specific experiences with that kind of color. And there's a field that studies this called color psychology.

2:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So it's an interesting field in that it's very quickly figured out there's no universality to color psychology because of all of those factors that you just mentioned. And it's a very personal response. But the fact that people do have emotional and psychological responses to color, which means that it's just totally symbolic to them, that is worth investigating and diving into. And then also there are some broad strokes, especially when you're talking about a large culture, a bunch of societies that form an even bigger culture that you can manipulate to sell things to those people if you want to using color as a marketer advertiser.

2:51Yeah.

2:51Josh Clark:I mean, a lot of thought like beyond just your own home or whatever, how you want to paint your room, which, by the way, we're going to color drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this? No. Color drenching is when you paint everything in there. Oh, neat. The same color, like ceiling, trim, doors, everything.

3:10Chuck Bryant:What about in lamps and stuff too, or just the stuff that's fastened down?

3:14Josh Clark:No, no, no. Just like wall, ceiling, trim, doors, everything you would normally paint. You paint it all one color and it sounds impressive, but it's really kind of awesome. And it seems like a trend.

3:25Chuck Bryant:That sounds really cool. Are you doing it in matte? It seems like a matte would be best for something like that.

3:30Josh Clark:Yeah, probably matte, maybe semi-gloss, but it'll be, I think it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do. That's cool, man. Do you know what color you're going to get? Probably like a deep green, something kind of dark.

3:43Chuck Bryant:Okay. I used to have, back in the 90s, back when burgundy and dark blue and hunter green were all in fashion. I put them all together in my bedroom and it looked knockout.

3:57Josh Clark:Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll let you know how it goes. Okay. I'll just nudge you in bed and say, what do you think?

4:04Chuck Bryant:Perfect.

4:05Josh Clark:All right. So we were talking about the obvious thing like just painting your room or something. But, you know, a lot of thought goes into color design for logos and, like, the lobby of the big corporation or what kind of color the nurse's uniform should be or the kid's hospital room should be. Like, that's all color psychology. For sure.

4:26Chuck Bryant:there's also color symbolism too where your culture basically says hey we believe wearing black is a sign of mourning like if you're in mourning wear black if you go to another culture typically in the east they'll say no you wear white when you're in mourning right so there's not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors it's all what one culture decides that color means. Like another good example is associating luck with green. And you can actually trace that back to Ireland being considered the Emerald Isle and leprechauns being associated with luck. So through a bunch of cultural convolutions, the West associates green with good luck, right?

5:10Chuck Bryant:That you would not find that in other cultures, right? So there is like a real culturally bound aspect to it. But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated to where if you were chased by a bear in the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to like the color green very much, or you're not going to like brown because that reminds you of the color of the grizzly bear. Whereas somebody else would be like, I was raised on a farm and everything was brown and I loved it, so I love the color brown. It gets like that detailed and that granular. The upshot of the whole thing is that colors can affect us.

5:47Chuck Bryant:And that in and of itself, you just, it's so, we just know that. But if you step back and actually think about what's going on, it's actually kind of mind-blowing, especially in the ways it affects us.

5:58Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. They have done cross-cultural studies about, you know, how it is around the world. They found that American and Japanese, their concepts of warm and cold colors are about the same. But in Japan, blue and green are perceived as good, and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad, where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered good, and orange and red and purple bad. Yeah, and one thing I wanted to mention about the morning colors is we have an African-American church right around the block from us, and they have had their fair share of funerals over the years. And a lot of these, I've seen everybody wearing purple.

6:37Josh Clark:And I've wondered if that was a thing in the black community or if it was just something particular to the person like that was their favorite color.

6:46Chuck Bryant:I don't know, but I do know that purple and gold and white and black are all, depending on the culture, appropriate morning wear.

6:55Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write in and tell me because I never feel like I can just walk up to the gathering and say like, hey, was this person into purple or what's the deal?

7:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

7:06Josh Clark:Not the right time.

7:07Chuck Bryant:I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to ask you. Yeah. You want to take a break and come back and talk about the Crayola 8-pack of colors? Let's do it.

7:29Chuck Bryant:Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was out of breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

8:15Chuck Bryant:This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

8:51Chuck Bryant:cult. NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neuro-linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

9:48Josh Clark:All right, Josh promised now that we're back to talk about the Crayola 8. But as we do on Stuff You Should Know, we're not going to talk about all eight. We're just going to hit some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go and start with red. I think we should talk about red because that's the color that kind of has the strongest reaction usually out of people because red is just a very big, bold, brave choice in a lot of cases. They say if you have a red car, you're going to get pulled over more often by cops. They report feelings of strength when you wear red or courage or aggression.

10:24Josh Clark:It can actually increase your heart rate and energy level. And obviously red is why, you know, you paint stop signs red. It's because it's a real eye grabber or a warning label is red because it'll catch your eye.

10:38Chuck Bryant:Right. And another one, it depends on the shade. or I guess the saturation or value. Ooh. But I like orange sometimes. Apparently a lot of people can't stand orange, and I get that because there are colors that I can't stand. Like what? I really don't like magenta.

11:00Josh Clark:What's magenta? Is that like a purple?

11:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's like a reddish purple, like reddish purple.

11:06Josh Clark:What's your favorite color?

11:08Chuck Bryant:Blue, often like a robin's egg blue, but also I like royal blues kind of nice, dark blue. The bluer blues rather than the darker blues I usually kind of lean toward. But, yeah. I also like pastels.

11:25Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, sure. You've got a nice stable of pastel sweatshirts and things.

11:29Chuck Bryant:I do.

11:32Josh Clark:I tend to depend on the season. I really, you know, kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and sort of forest greens in the fall and winter. And I brighten up a bit, but I definitely love greens and browns and hues of orange the most, I think. I see. Yeah.

11:52Chuck Bryant:But which one are we talking about? Yellow?

11:54Josh Clark:No, orange.