What color, to you, relates most to anger? A study in 2023 suggests that red has the strongest association with anger than other colors. By comparing how artists graphically visualized several different emotions, including anger, to how non-artists did the same, this study found many similarities between these two groups, more specifically the color used (Damiano et, al.). Since commonality was found between the artists’ and non-artists’ renderings, it can be suggested that there are several commonalities in how individuals depict emotions through color. 

Color psychology is the study of color and hues as a determining factor of behavior and decision-making. One of the more studied facets of color psychology is how color affects perception in humans. This is found in many places in the western world. The food industry has many examples of this. If one were to drink a red drink, they would expect it to taste like a red food, like strawberry or cherry. Another example is how food is marketed to people using color. A container of fruit most likely will have colors that reinforce the idea of freshness, like green; while a loaf of bread may be packaged with muted colors, like brown, for a homemade and organic feel, mimicking the color of things like soil and dirt. Another way our perception can be influenced by color can be seen in a 1996 study on colored placebo pills. The study found that of the available evidence in the study, sugar pills with red and orange coloring reported to have produced stimulating effects, while pills colored with blue and green coloring seemingly produced more sedative effects. (Craen et, al.) 

This field of study is mostly theoretical, but recently, there have been empirical studies about it as it is becoming more topical. As many findings there are about color psychology as there is, there exists many weaknesses in the field. Color psychology is in its early stage of research, and it is not easy to find definitive pieces of data that support the main idea of color psychology, but there may be in the future

References

• Damiano, C., Gayen, P., Rezanejad, M., Banerjee, A., Banik, G., Patnaik, P., Wagemans, J., & Walther, D. B.
  Anger is red, sadness is blue: Emotion depictions in abstract visual art by artists and non-artists. Journal of Vision, 2023, 23(4), 1.
  https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.23.4.1

• Craen, A. J., Roos, P. J., de Vries, A. L., & Kleijnen, J.
  Effect of colour of drugs: systematic review of perceived effect of drugs and of their effectiveness. BMJ, 1996, Dec 21-28, 313(7072), 1624–1626. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7072.1624