The stability of colour-emotion associations across colour presentation modes and experimental settings

Colour-emotion associations seem consistent across cultures, but the question remains whether these associations depend on actual colour perception. We examined whether colour-emotion associations are invariant to colour presentation mode (colour terms vs. colour patches) and experimental setup (laboratory vs. online). In a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, 873 Arabic speakers in Saudi Arabia associated 20 emotion concepts with 11 basic colour categories presented as terms or patches, either in controlled laboratory conditions or online. Participants self-selected focal colours online, while we used pre-selected colours in the laboratory. The most frequent association was red-love (61.5%), with distinct patterns for warm colours (associated with high arousal) and cool colours (associated with low arousal). The correlation analyses revealed remarkably similar patterns of colour-emotion associations across all four conditions (all r > .90, p < .001). While participants associated more positive emotions in the laboratory than online, no other significant differences were found for valence, arousal, or power biases between the experimental conditions. There were, however, differences for the number of associated emotions (higher online and for colour patches) and for emotion intensity (higher for colour terms), suggesting that participants exhibited somewhat different behaviours depending on the testing location and colour presentation mode. Overall, the patterns of colour-emotion associations seem largely independent of colour presentation mode and experimental setup, highlighting that these associations likely operate on an abstract representational level. Our results validate the use of both laboratory and online methodologies for studying colour-emotion associations, enabling more diverse and representative cross-cultural research.