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Research on colour preferences has yielded few significant findings, possibly due to the complexity of factors, which influence an individual's reaction to colour. The present study had for Its aim to Investigate the projective aspects of colour preferences. Subjects Indicated their preferences for a series of coloured gradients. The findings indicated that colour preferences, in terms of thier relationship with personality variables, varied according to the attitude, which subjects took towards specific pairs of colours. For example, subjects who reported that they disliked both images were more likely to score more highly on a NEO-IIke factor, Agreeableness, than those who reported less often that they disliked both images. The discussion indicated that as a preliminary study the results needed to be replicated.
In their review of colour psychology, Whitfield and Wiltshire (1990) commented that although it was a common assumption that preferences for colours reflected accompanying affect, the evidence from research literature did not really support it. They pointed out further that previous research did indicate that colours have been shown to exhibit a variety of findings, including 'meaning responses' and attitudes, such as reflect cultural influences, cognitive style, personality and training. Whitfield and Wiltshire argued strongly that preferences made in laboratory studies hardly reflect the actual, preferential behaviour that people use in the selection of everyday objects. So many variables influence such preferences that it is practically impossible to allow for them in a systematic, laboratory style of experiment. Laboratory studies, such as those using colour chips, seem to have contained the implicit assumption that if one 'removes all reference to normal categories of objects, such as clothing and furnishings that preference for colour would somehow manifest itself in an unadulterated form.' This seems to be a painly untenable idea.
Valdez and Mehrabian (1994), on the contrary, followed the laboratory tradition in their investigation into the effects of colour emotion. They criticized previous researchers on two main grounds. First, they often failed to give adequate specifications or controls of colour stimuli, or used 'non-standard or unspecified lighting conditions'. Second, they frequently failed to use sufficiently reliable, valid, or comprehensive measures of emotional responses to colour stimuli. They themselves studied emotional reactions to colour hue, saturation and brightness in relation to the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance...