A study of colour emotion and colour preference. part II: Colour emotions for two-colour combinations

Eleven colour-emotion scales, warm-cool, heavy-light, modern-classical, clean-dirty, active-passive, hard-soft, harmonious-disharmonious, tense-relaxed, fresh-stale, masculine-feminine, and like-dislike, were investigated on 190 colour pairs with British and Chinese observers. Experimental results show that gender difference existed in masculine-feminine, whereas no significant cultural difference was found between British and Chinese observers. Three colour-emotion factors were identified by the method of factor analysis and were labeled "colour activity," "colour weight," and "colour heat. " These factors were found similar to those extracted from the single colour emotions developed in Part I. This indicates a coherent framework of colour emotion factors for single colours and two-colour combinations. An additivity relationship was found between single-colour and colour-combination emotions. This relationship predicts colour emotions for a colour pair by averaging the colour emotions of individual colours that generate the pair. However, it cannot be applied to colour preference prediction. By combining the additivity relationship with a single-colour emotion model, such as those developed in Part I, a colour-appearance-based model was established for colour-combination emotions. With this model one can predict colour emotions for a colour pair if colour-appearance attributes of the component colours in that pair are known. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.