Emotion-spectrum response to form and color: Implications for usability

Previous empirical studies have shown consistent emotional responses to form and color, across a variety of contexts and especially across cultures. What varies across contexts and cultures is evaluation of the color/form/emotion response. For example, both the color red and jagged, high contrast forms consistently evoke one emotional response neutrally described as agitation or activation, a response evaluated negatively as anger or positively as excitement. Standard taxonomies of emotion do not consistently distinguish between the positive/negative evaluation of an emotion (e.g. committed/obsessed) and its raw quality (e.g. focused). Consequently, the consistent relationships between form/color and emotion have been obscured. We propose a new model of emotional response that treats color/form triggers of emotion quality separately from triggers of emotion evaluation. This new model identifies a spectrum of emotional quality (agitated-stimulated-amused-rested-focused-organized-concerned) generally parallel to the familiar color spectrum (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet). With this model, we can demonstrate a stable emotion-spectrum response in a population of viewers, to any given combination of form and color. This paper will report on empirical tests of this emotion spectrum model and discuss implications for usability testing of visual information designs.