Color For Profit. Louis Cheskin
that a mere question did not provide the appropriate association factor or incentive.
The following is one such experiment that was made with forty club women of a middle class economic group. They were asked to walk through a room and then to write down what they had seen. After they had done so they were conducted back to the room where everything remained exactly as before except that a pair of scissors had been removed from the table.
They were asked to cut out images from colored sheets of paper. Scissors were needed to do the job. Twenty-four of them now said that they were sure they had seen scissors the first time they were in the room. Yet only three originally listed scissors as one of the items they had seen.
This meant that twenty-one out of twenty-four persons could bring forth the image of scissors when they actually needed the scissors for performing a task, whereas, in reply to the question, “What did you see in the room?” they did not list the scissors.
Normal and Abnormal Color Reactions
Colors have deep symbolic meanings. For example, we associate red with festivity, blue with distinction, purple with dignity, green with nature, yellow with sunshine. Pink is generally associated with health. People often say, “He is in the pink,” meaning that he is in very good health. White is a symbol of purity. Black expresses evil.
Colors are used as designations of special merit in awarding honors and prizes. Flags are the symbols of countries. We all know what red, white and blue mean to us. These and many other color associations are normal, traditional and social.
Normally, people speak of gay colors and somber colors, of colors that give pleasure and colors that depress. However, there are individuals whose reactions to colors are neither normal, nor traditional, nor social.
Tests on an unconscious level have shown that a specific magenta red has a preference rating of 94. This means that while 94 out of a hundred persons react to the color in a normal pleasurable way, six react unfavorably to this color. The reasons for the six individuals reacting negatively to an inherently beautiful color go back to an early childhood traumatic experience associated with the color.
A young Army officer and his wife and child lived in a one room apartment with camp-made furniture. One day when the baby was put into the high chair, she began to scream loudly.
When the chair was examined it was found that a nail had become exposed and had pricked the baby deeply into the flesh. The nail was immediately removed but the child refused to sit in the high chair even weeks after this experience. The parents were frantic but did not know what to do.
When this was explained to a friend who was a color specialist, he suggested that they paint the red high chair green. After this was done, the baby was perfectly content to sit in it. It is highly probable that this baby girl will grow up with a strong dislike for red.
A mother foolishly pointed out a policeman to her boy, telling him that if he did not behave this man would take him away and lock him up in a jail all by himself.
One day the boy’s father bought a new blue worsted suit for himself of which he was very proud. When he entered the room in his new suit the little boy became hysterical.
However, the relationship between the father’s blue suit and the child’s abnormal behavior was not discovered by the parents. Only much professional psychoanalytical probing revealed that the little boy associated the blue suit with the man who was going to take him to jail. The color, in this case, was a stronger emotional factor than the father-son relationship. (It is, of course, evident here that the father-son relationship was not very close.) The impression from such an experience, if it is not detected and corrected, can result in a lifelong, strong dislike for blue.
Jerry was six years old when his mother brought him to a children’s psychiatric clinic. The mother reported that Jerry not only refused to go to school but would get sudden fits whenever school was mentioned and that even on some occasions when the subject was not mentioned he became hysterical.
The mother was advised by the interviewer to matriculate the boy in the special classes for problem children conducted by the clinic. In these classes the children are observed by trained psychiatric social workers and a daily record is kept of each child’s behavior.
For the first two days Jerry was inhibited, fearful, unexpressive but otherwise normal. On the third day he became hysterical and again on the fourth day.
An analysis of the daily record showed that the hysteria took place each time during an art session. The connection between the hysterical behavior and the art class appeared to be coincidental until all the minute elements of the art class were classified and analyzed.
The highly trained psychiatric social worker found something that would have been meaningless to the average teacher. She observed that the hysteria took place only when the children were painting with orange paint. They painted with red tempera on Monday, with blue on Tuesday, and on Wednesday with orange. For some reason, either planned or coincidental, the same orange paint was used again on Thursday and also, on Thursday, Jerry was hysterical. On Friday they painted with yellow and, although the boy was highly nervous, he carried through his art activity without incident. The following week and the third week there was the same correlation between the orange color and hysterical behavior of the six year old.
The boy was put with a group of children who worked with all colors except orange or colors closely related to orange. No hysteria showed up.
During the time the boy was attending the classes, another psychiatric social worker was meeting with the boy’s mother twice a week. When the correlation of the orange color and the boy’s hysteria was presented to the mother’s social worker, she began to ask the mother leading questions. Previously the mother had described her child’s hysterical behavior as coming on suddenly with no cause whatever. Now the following story came out.
The mother and her son were visiting relatives in another state when school began. Jerry therefore did not start school at the same time with the other boys and girls. When Jerry was brought to school by his mother for the first time it was just before Halloween. The class was given the project of drawing a pumpkin.
Because it was Jerry’s first experience with tempera he was timid about handling it and when the class session was over his pumpkin drawing was not finished.
The teacher was one of those who believe in enforcing discipline from the very beginning. She announced that all those who had not finished the drawing lesson must remain after class to finish it. Jerry watched the boys and girls rush out of the room to meet their mothers in the foyer. He alone had to remain to finish drawing the pumpkin.
The large class room suddenly became unnaturally quiet. He saw that he was alone with only the austere teacher sitting at her desk on a platform very high and very distant from him. He became terrified and began to cry out loud. The teacher rushed up to him and reprimanded him in a harsh voice that echoed in the large empty room. The boy became hysterical and the teacher dragged him out to his mother with the exclamation that he was a very bad boy, lazy and troublesome. This traumatic experience became associated in the boy’s unconscious with the color of pumpkin—orange.
Had this association of the sensation of an orange color with a traumatic experience not been discovered in the child, the boy could have grown up with a color complex that might have been a strong handicap in his adult life. There are many adults who have strong color phobias due to similar childhood traumatic experiences associated with colors.