Everybody knows what COLOUR is –

until they are asked to explain it

Colour is psychology

Lars Sivik,

research prof em. formerly Dep of Psychol, Univ of Goteborg,

Technical Univ of Stockholm – KTH, and Technical Univ of Goteborg – CTH

Sweden

Colour is psychology

How come?

What is colour – in reality –

and what is reality??

colour IS WHAT YOU BUY IN A TIN AND PAINT

WITH ?

colours consist of RGB-values?

colours consist of radiation and wavelengths

colour is neuroelectrical activity ?

Most definitions of colour are said to be correct

-

but actually quite

WRONG pas vrai nevalja falsch falso fel

The only truly correct definition of colour:

COLOUR IS WHAT WE

SEE as colour

colours are created in the psyche,

in the very moment we

perceive ”them”,

and as long as we look at ”them”

which means that they exist only in the brain

Brain activity is Perception

Perception is Psychology

Already Isaak Newton pointed out that”The rays are NOT coloured”

Sir Isaak Newton

That implies that colours do not exist out there

therefore

• All our senses are psychological,….

• A tree is falling in the wood………..

colour science sometimes distinguishes between

Perceptual Colour and

Physical colour (in spite of that Newton, the Father of Physics, said

that the rays are not colours)

”reality” has many definitions

and it is an arbitrary choice which of them we choose to relate to our

colour vision ability

Colour stimulus is a more correct concept:

It can, for example, be distal or proximal

There are many well known examples of so-called illusions

- which actually are no illusions

as their purpose is not to deceive us, but to help us better perceive

our environment

TV-set power OFF

•  where does the BLACK come from?

power OFF power ON

the black (reality) is in our heads:

power OFF power ON

?

A spectrophotometer is actually blind and it cannot even see the

difference between

black and white

- but with many

decimals!

Why do we have a colour vision at all?

----------- answer:

• to detect objects and

• to identify them in order to get along on the planet Tellus

o

We detect things by colour differences

(object-background)

We identify things by their colours and forms

hopefully you see the small squares (same colour simulus) as different colours

otherwise there is something wrong with your eyes

A more correct word for simultaneous contrast would be

contrast enhancement This ability of our brain is a tool that makes us detect differences better

“Blessed are the naïve who do not know anything

about colour science -

they shall understand colour”

Our ancestors understood colour quite easily,

then came the scientific

revolution, and we were no longer allowed

to beleive our eyes

An endless quarrel began:

which are the true primary colours ??

subtractive colour mixture

or additive

and there was also perpetuous arguments on

Which is the right colour order system ?? RAL PMS

MUNSELL CIE CIA RGB KGB

DIN HSV PLANET XYZ ...

Colour is involved in all areas of psychology

e.g. perception psychology

with neuro-psychology psychophysics psychometrics

and cognition – memory - thinking

psycholinguistics environmental psychology

---- you name it

If colour is psychology What is then colour

psychology ??

•  I know you want to hear about: Colour preferences – which colours are more beautiful

than others – colour effects on the mood, on diseases, on people´s working capacity – on everything human….

How important are colours for architecture, in

interiors – on houses.. Can people be described by color names? – Colour me

beautiful by colour analysis !!! ……… and much more

Many such questions are relevant, while others are ..

But whatever we want to investigate in relation to

colour we need a valid and reliable colour reference system in order to make the results comparable with those

of other studies

In chosing – creating – or identifying a COLOUR ORDER SYSTEM:

Where to start ??

With the physical attributes of surfaces?

or with the colours as such

EWALD HERING physiologist

was also a Phenomenologist!

He dared trust what he could see with

his eyes and he IDENTIFIED the NATURAL colour SYSTEM

“I see 6 ”Urfarben”

that are visually unique”

- and there must be a physiological basis for that”

.. all other colours can be

described in terms

of these six ELEMENTARY

colours.

(postulate 1)

HERING also observed that a colour

cannot be yellow

and blue at the same

time - nor

simultaneously green and red (postulate 2)

..and those two observations regarding the colour phenomenon

constitute the cornerstones

of his model for colour vision and colour systematization

Ewald Hering’s

OPPONENT colour THEORY

was not fully recognized by science

until some decades ago

Two Finnish-Swedish scientists,

Ragnar Granit (Nobel-prize) and Gunnar Swetichin,

+ two Dutchmen, Walraven and Vos,

have proposed models for

how Hering’s theory was congruent with earlier scientific findings of vision

Earlier work in Sweden with a colour order system based on Hering’s

Opponent Colour Theory was (already in the fifties) made by

Tryggve Johansson (physicist)

and Sven Hesselgren (architect)

further development, by A. Hård, G. Tonnqvist and L. Sivik, and others

resulted in the present version of

the the NCS

NCS – NATURAL colour SYSTEM

NCS – Natural Colour System® – The international language of colour communication

The reason why Hering called his system NATURAL:

“It is people’s natural way

of ordering colours.

This structure is inherent in the human brain”

Please note that the NCS is a theoretical model for how colours are organised in the human

brain

In contrast to all other colour systems it is entirely perceptually based

The theoretical NCS colour System is illustrated by

The NCS colour Atlas

…in contrast to all other systems where the atlas constitutes the system

Now back to ”colour psychology”……

Namely psychometry and psychophysics

The NCS colour Atlas

is based on (hundreds of thousands) psychometric observations

and all samples are, of course, anchored

in the CIE by thousands of psychophysical measurements

The NCS colour System and Atlas

now the most common reference system in research on

colour appearance

examples of Swedish research based on the NCS: • colour contrast

principle for operational scale of increasing colour contrast

•  examples of Swedish research based on the NCS: • phenomenological and physical analyses of the NCS parameters, constituent as well as complementary

(w, s, c, lightness, darkness, clarity, saturation, grayness,..) brightness..

examples of Swedish research based on the NCS: • colour naming and colour-describing words mapping in the colour space

examples of Swedish research based on the NCS:

• colour combination theory perhaps the most important follow-up

of the NCS

examples of colour combination dimensions: • interval • chord • tuning

Colour changes due to •  viewing distance •  Varying illumination, light sources •  Varying area size

At 80 m viewing distance and overcast sky illumination Perceived colour of objects in hue -Y10R, compared with their inherent colours (1-6)

5

4

3

2

6

6

5

4

3

2

1

1

•  Colour on signs for warning and attention

• Colour associations and meaning mapping in the colour space varying over time – culture - context factor analysis, semantic dimensions,analysis of

bipolarity,reliability etc.,

• Meaning and semantic dimensions of

Colour combinations

•  Comment on color in psychiatric treatment

•  Use common sense to be skeptical

The physicists have grabbed the simple problems of colour

The really difficult ones are contained in colour psychology

(David Wright)

Please continue the efforts (but not from the beginning)

All psychological colour questions cannot be investigated,

most of them can be answered with common sense

There is no reason, however, neither to diminish the importance of colour,

nor ascribe to them too much of weird psychological meaning

Colour is psychology

Lars Sivik