Rosas são vermelhas e violetas são azuis? A influência das emoções sobre a percepção de cores

Abstract

Colors are not just an aesthetic stimulus, they also directly affect human cognition and behavior. Studies of psychodynamics and color psychology, for example, indicate that the colors of an object, or a place, can induce emotions. Emotions, in turn, also interfere with color vision and perception, due to the ability of certain emotional states to induce changes in important neurotransmitters, directly affecting the excitation, which in turn causes contractions or dilations in the pupil, altering the amount of light that reaches the retina. Negative emotions such as sadness, for example, would impair the visual perception of color by triggering reactions that promote falls in dopamine levels, and disrupt pupil contraction, consequently impairing sensitivity to chromatic contrast. Already positive emotional states, such as joy, could be responsible for expanding visual attention. The present research observed the occurrence of the influence of the emotional states of joy or sadness on the perception of colors of the human vision. We investigate how that influence affects individuals with normal color vision and colorblind individuals, who in turn can no longer distinguish certain colors, the research had the participation of 74 men between the ages of 18 and 35, colorblind and non-colorblind. All participants were submitted to the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Ishihara Test, and the Lanthonny D-40 Hue color perception test and watched a video of approximately 3 minutes of emotional stimulation. After the videos were taken, the participants again performed the color perception test. We evaluated whether there was a significant change in the performance of the ability of their color perception. The data resulting from this work suggest that there is significant influence of emotion on both color perception and pupil size. Thus, as hypothesized initially, not only semantic information, but also emotional aspects seem to be involved in visual cognition and consequently in color perception of human vision.