Creativity and the Psychology of Color
I’ve always been interested in enhancing creativity. I’ve known since I was very young that I was born to write. I wrote my first ‘novel’ (on ruled paper) when I was about nine years old while spending a humid, lazy summer at my grandmother’s house in rural Nebraska. With my little fingers wrapped tightly around that slim blue marker with the chewed up white cap, I sat on the concrete porch stoop, under a giant maple tree, listening to the buzz of cicadas, as I poured out a story about a girl who rescues a dolphin and in return, the dolphin turns her into a mermaid. Aside from being imaginative, it wasn’t very good. But then again, it was my very first story of over twenty pages, and like I said, I was nine.
I loved marine life. At the time I wanted to be an ichthyologist when I grew up (since I couldn’t be an actual mermaid), the blue ink was inspiring, and this was a way to live out a fantasy that was far beyond my reach given Nebraska is about as landlocked as a state can be. But even at that age, I felt most comfortable with a pen or pencil in my hand and a notebook full of blank paper on my lap, ready to create the next vicarious escape.
This month, ‘creativity’ has been the focus of all four of my articles including ‘The Science of Creativity’ and ‘Creativity and Mental Health.’ Having explored both of those concepts, I wanted to examine how color works with (or against) creativity.
We all have a favorite color and it’s something we develop quite early as children. Mine, as you could have probably guessed, was blue because it was the color of things that intrigued me most—the ocean and the sky. Both were big and expansive and teeming with mystery, hiding so many things above and below. Beneath the waves were worlds no human has ever seen—coral reefs and deep trenches that were home to fish and sharks and octopi that looked prehistoric, cities built by Sea Monkeys (I really wanted to believe they lived in underwater castles like the picture showed on the box), and maybe even Atlantis. Somewhere behind that vast, azure sky was an expansive, black outer space where shooting stars and planets with rings and maybe even aliens spun about in their very own solar systems.
In my 40s, long after I’d been writing professionally for almost two decades, I became intrigued by the balance of mind, body, and spirit which sparked my interest in Ayurvedism. Ayurvedism is defined as the Hindu system of medicine based primarily on naturopathy and homeopathy, but that’s an oversimplification. Ayurvedic principles apply to all aspects of life and humanity from health to temperament to living in harmony with nature and even the afterlife. In Ayurvedic teachings, individuals are one of three types of personalities. I am very clearly pitha, and pitha people are all about transformation, fire, and you guessed it, water.
For more about Ayurvedism, don’t miss my article on March 28th titled ‘Applying Ayurvedic Principles to Creativity,’ only for paid subscribers.
The majority of people around the world prefer blue over other colors. According to ecological valence theory set forth by Karen Schloss, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we layer meaning onto color because they represent things we like or dislike. Most people like clean water and cloudless skies, hence they like blue. Most people dislike feces on their shoe and public toilets full of urine which is why brown and dark yellow are much less popular.
That doesn’t seem like a difficult theory to buy into, at least until you realize that color preferences, at least in a laboratory setting, can be manipulated. In one study, Schloss showed participants photos of positive and negative objects colored green and red and asked them to choose which color they prefer. It’s no surprise that those shown a photo of a lush green hillside along with a picture of a red, bloody wound preferred green, and those shown a photo of a crisp red apple alongside a photo of green pond scum, preferred red.
What’s interesting about the study is that it’s not so much the color itself that we like or don’t, but what the individual projects that color to mean, that makes the difference. When colors are simply colors and there are no objects associated with the colors, sans the photographs of apples and algae, we are left to create our own associations.
Of course, not all researchers agree with the merits of ecological valence theory. Some believe that color preferences are socially engrained. Studies have shown that pink is a favorite color among female children, but its popularity peaks during elementary school. Even before girls become pubescent, their preference for pink wanes significantly. Meanwhile boys, who are taught that pink is a color for girls, will allow themselves to prefer any color other than pink to avoid being an anomaly. An experimental psychologist named Domicele Jonauskaite at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland has studied the cognitive and affective connotations of color and has pointed out that color preference studies in non-globalized villages in Peru show that none of the young girls preferred pink to other colors, suggesting that when girls aren’t conditioned by society to like pink, they don’t.
If color preference relies on social conditioning and experiential associations, is it even possible that color affects an individual’s creativity?
If you were to search ‘which color is connected to creativity’ (I’ll save you the time—I already googled it), you’ll find that nearly every color supposedly enhances creativity, depending on which result you choose to click on. Purple, yellow, and orange tend to be the most popular, although I found websites suggesting the best colors for creative thinking are blue and green. Even gray was promised to promote clarity according to Feng Shui.
If pretty much any color can inspire creative ideas, do shades and tints matter? If you remember back to art class in school, shades are pure colors in which black has been added, while tints are pure colors in which white has been added. For example, white added to red creates a pink tint, while black added to red creates a burgundy shade. Are tints of all colors more conducive for creative thinking than shades? Or vice versa.
Marketing ‘experts’ have long operated under the notion that men prefer shades and women prefer tints, based on a study dating back to the 1960s (although having grown up with a burnt-orange sofa and a lime green macrame plant hanger side by side in my parents’ living room, I have to question that generation’s ability to competently choose colors at all). It’s not uncommon to see a product in dark packaging for men and the same product in lighter packaging for women (check out Dove deodorant in slate gray and dark green packaging for men, and in white packaging with pink and violet accents for women if you don’t believe me). Again, this speaks to cultural conditioning of color preference—is there something in the male brain that really prefers shades over tints, or are they taught that these are colors best suited for them by marketing companies?
With so much conflicting information, it feels like color theory in general is mostly conjecture and junk science. Are there specific colors that promote creativity? Are they the same colors we prefer as individuals? Do we prefer certain colors because we’re conditioned to, or because of our innate qualities and quiddities? Or is the best color for creativity no color at all? After all, Feng Shui states that white (the absence of color) invites feelings of purity and birth, and is the best shade for creating new ideas…
I don’t have a definitive answer, but you’ve stuck with me thus far, so I’ll give you my completely unsubstantiated by science, unabashedly anecdotal opinion. Colors are powerful. When I want to feel inspired, I do a quick image search of photos of small, colorful fishing boats floating on the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. Those photos take me back to my own trips to the Caribbean where I sat on the soft sand, feeling the warmth of the setting sun on my shoulders, and looked out at the turquoise water, wishing I could sink below the warm waves into the sea floor of white coral and exist there for an infinite moment. My mind teems with existential questions and I am overcome with unbridled joy and sadness all at once. And there I feel the creativity wanting to burst forth, to create something as beautiful and tranquil and dangerous and deceptive as the sea. Perhaps it’s not just the green-turquoise-blue of that water that takes me there. Perhaps it the faint scent of tropical orchids hanging in the trees, or the rhythm of the waves lapping against the sand, or even the taste of salt on my lips from the sun-dried seawater. But mostly, I think it’s the color of the water and the fantasy it recalls of saving a dolphin and being turned into a mermaid, long before I was certain it wasn’t possible.
Colors absolutely influence our feelings and evoke pleasant (or unpleasant) memories. They symbolize experiences and remind of us of inexplicable phenomenon in the natural world. Finding a color that allows you to tap into your own soul, at the place where you connect with the universe and there’s no more seperation between you and the external world. Whether those are feelings of melancholy, awe, power or insignificance, immersing yourself in it, will move you closer to the source of your creativity.
Maybe blue isn’t your thing. Or maybe it is, but not today.
The only way for you to know which color can unlock channels of creativity is to try them. Does setting a lush green plant in a big orange vase on your desk do anything for you? What if you buy a purple remnant of fabric from a notions store and drape it over your sofa? Maybe just trying setting a glass bowl of bright yellow lemons on your table. Surround yourself with colors in every room of your home and pay attention to which colors make you feel inspired and which don’t.
Do you respond best to the cozy colors of autumn— deep reds and oranges and yellows and brown? Or the vibrant colors of spring—verdant greens speckled with purple and magenta? Or is summer your thing with cerulean, turquoise, bright yellow, soft coral, and golden, sandy shades? Or perhaps even winter with bright, clean white, rich cardinal, and rich mahogany brown? Do the colors of the city make you feel energetic—slate gray, taxi yellow, bright reds and sparkling silver? Do the colors of a farm make you feel peaceful—barn red, flax yellow, sunset orange? What do they unlock in you?
Color truly can bring you back to the moments when your soul connected to greater consciousness, and creation was happening all around you and inside of you. But that color is unique to the experience, and that experience is unique to you.
You’ll find it. You just need to experiment a little bit.
Happy Writing!
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