Influence of Color on Emotion Recognition Is Not Bidirectional: An Investigation of the Association Between Color and Emotion Using a Stroop-Like Task

Abstract

The association between color and emotion has been shown, with red facilitating recognition of anger and green facilitating recognition of happiness. However, it has been unclear if emotional stimulus conversely facilitates and/or inhibits recognition of such colors. This study used a Stroop-like task, which required participants to ignore facial expressions and recognize color, in order to investigate the influence of emotion on recognition of color. In addition, this study investigated the association between color and emotion recognition from emoticons, as it was recently suggested that the process of emotion recognition from emoticons was different from that of actual faces. Results revealed that for facial expressions and emoticons, color influenced emotion recognition, in line with previous studies. Conversely, facial expression did not influence recognition of color. The results suggest that in emotion recognition people consider surrounding contextual information and integrate it automatically; however, in color recognition, they do not.