Blue hues don
Schloss, Witzel and Lai study the common belief that yellow is happy and blue is sad. They separate the contributions of lightness, chroma and hue by controlling for lightness and chroma, either statistically or colorimetrically. After controlling for lightness and chroma, colours with a blue hue were no sadder than colours with a yellow hue, and in some cases blue hues were happier. The results can guide efforts to understand colour-emotion associations.
Schloss, Witzel and Lai study the common belief that yellow is happy and blue is sad. They separate the contributions of lightness, chroma and hue by controlling for lightness and chroma, either statistically or colorimetrically. After controlling for lightness and chroma, colours with a blue hue were no sadder than colours with a yellow hue, and in some cases blue hues were happier. The results can guide efforts to understand colour-emotion associations.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
What our sources record
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t bring the blues: questioning conventional notions of color-emotion associations.' Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 37(5), 813-824. doi:10.1364/JOSAA.383588