The multiple characteristics of specific associations from words to colors

Abstract

This study mainly focused on exploring the multiple characteristics of specific associations from words to colors. Color association is bidirectional, representing the relationship from color to concept or concept to color. The association between word and color has multiple correspondences in both directions. Colors are associated with ideas, concepts, meanings, emotions, and so forth. However, it is often discussed as a single relationship from color to the concept. How the specific ideas or concepts associated with color, is rarely discussed. So, this work started from a specific concept (words) to colors and then investigated the characteristics of this association. A psychophysical experiment was carried out to collect the specific color associations from target words. Pearson correlation coefficient and K-means clustering methods were employed to analyze the associations from words to colors. Therefore, the main contribution of this study is to (1) indicate the stronger association from the word to color, the larger the color similarity of the related colors; (2) identify the specific characteristic of the association from a word to colors and the three-aspect characteristic model was summarized.