Have color representations in books changed over the past 200 years? An empirical analysis based on the Google Books Ngram corpus

Abstract

Color significantly shapes our perceptions of the world, and extensive scientific research has explored various aspects of color, including color linguistics, aesthetics, color and marketing, color therapy, and color psychology. Notably, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the psychological domain of color in recent years. However, limited scholarly attention has been given to studying the changes in color representations and emotions over the decades. To address this gap, we utilized word embedding models of Google Books Ngrams corpus to examine the most strongly associated entities and traits with colors and their evolution in color emotions over 200 years. Analyzing three emotional dimensions—pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD), we found that red, green, white, black, orange, purple, brown, and pink were related to the exuberant type (+P + A + D) in PAD emotional space. In contrast, blue was linked to the relaxed type (+P−A + D), and yellow constituted the anxious type (−P + A−D). Among all basic English color terms, the emotion-driven perceptions associated with white, brown, and pink have significantly changed over time.