Finding the topic of colour and emotions to be of interest within my previous post, I researched further into it to discover if this was an area I wanted to focus on.
Below I have read through and annotated a set of articles and blog posts which discuss the meanings of colours, how colours effect us and how they could be used as a form of mental therapy.
Refer to Research Folder
What have i found out?
From the research I managed to discover a range of different meanings connected with different colours, such as the both the positive and negative traits which are associated with them.
Also I learnt that colour has the ability to change someones mood and behaviour and has been used as a form of therapy for depression and other mental illnesses.
As well as used within marketing to manipulate society’s feelings towards a product or idea, which I feel could be classed as a subtle form of mind control.
The research also taught me that some colours effect the body physically, such as red that stimulates the body increasing the blood pressure and heart rate. Whereas others are more mental colours, such as blue which soothes the brain. Purple being a combination of both, stimulating the body to calm its mental state.
I discovered that blue is the most popular colour for mentally insane patients, however I later learnt that blue is the world’s favourite colour anyways so I am unsure about the validity of this statement, as it could just be because blue is already a popular colour and has nothing to do with the mental state of the person. Therefore I don’t plan to take this information further as it wouldn’t amount to much
What will I take forward and why?
The main themes and ideas that I will take from this research includes the connection between colour and emotions, how colour can be used to manipulate the emotions of people. Which leads me on to the concept of how people can\ (to some extent) read minds/ read someones emotions through colours they pick.
I wanted to take this forward as I find it fascinating that colour could be a form of mind reading, something that we wouldn’t normally consider it to be, due to us seeing colours everyday and not something we’d naturally notice. Which I feel makes it more of a subtle or secret form of manipulation which intrigues me.
Another area I wanted to take forward is the concept of colour therapy and the great benefit colour can have on our mental state and the treatment mental illness, by balancing and calm us.
Like the reasoning above, I’m intrigued how simply colour can help us mentally, its something we see every-day yet we don’t always noticed it and simply changing the colour in our life could greatly effect our well-being. I plan to research further into how the brain is effected by colours and any success stories behind colour therapy.
Plan
- Research further into colour and emotions – Emotions created from colour or manipulated by colour
- Research further into colour therapy, what exactly it is, how it works and anecdotes of how it has helped people.
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