An ecological valence theory of human color preference
Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss propose an ecological valence theory: colour preferences arise from people's average affective responses to the objects associated with those colours. People liked colours strongly associated with liked objects, such as blues with clear skies and clean water, and disliked colours associated with disliked objects. The authors report that the theory fits the data better than alternatives with fewer free parameters. The abstract does not report a green-specific finding or the sample size; applying the logic to green and vegetation is our extension.
Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss propose an ecological valence theory: colour preferences arise from people's average affective responses to the objects associated with those colours. People liked colours strongly associated with liked objects, such as blues with clear skies and clean water, and disliked colours associated with disliked objects. The authors report that the theory fits the data better than alternatives with fewer free parameters. The abstract does not report a green-specific finding or the sample size; applying the logic to green and vegetation is our extension.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record (paraphrased by the fetch tool), read 2026-11-03; bibliographic details via Crossref where stated; full text not read.
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Palmer, S. E., & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of human color preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(19), 8877-8882. doi:10.1073/pnas.0906172107.