The Psychology of Yellow

Havelock Ellis

• Publisher: Read & Co. Great Essays
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781528791144
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

The psychological effects of colour have long been known and are today widely harnessed in everything from advertising to interior design. In this volume, Havelock Ellis explores the psychological effects of the colour yellow, looking at its importance throughout history and cultures across the globe. A fascinating study that will appeal to those with an interest in history and colour psychology. Henry Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) was an English physician, writer, eugenicist and social reformer who studied human sexuality. Ellis was also an early researcher into the effects of psychedelics and wrote one of the first reports on a mescaline experience in 1896. Other notable works by this author include: "A Study of British Genius" (1904), "The Dance of Life" (1923), and "Psychology of Sex" (1933). Read & Co. Great Essays is proudly republishing this classic essay now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

THE
PSYCHOLOGY OF YELLOW

The part played by red as a powerful stimulant in the psychic life is clearly pronounced and fairly uniform among all peoples at all grades of civilization.[1] The special emotional tone of yellow is by no means so easy to define. It varies to a marked extent at different historical periods, in different regions of the globe, even under civilized conditions, at different ages in the same individual. There is no color which is sometimes so exalted in human estimation and sometimes so debased. The psychology of yellow thus presents problems which are peculiarly difficult to unravel.

Among primitive peoples the delight in yellow seems to be almost universal. Red is the favorite color of savages, but—as in the personal decoration with ochre of the tribes of Central Australia, according to Spencer and Gillen—yellow is easily second, and sometimes perhaps on the same level with red. Indeed, it may even at times seem to be preferred to red. Thus in some parts of New Guinea, although the natives are fond of scarlet, they take the trouble to feed a certain parrot having red tail-feathers on a yellow root (for they have no means of dyeing) until the tail feathers turn yellow.[2] As a general rule, when dyes are known, bright yellow, after or with scarlet, is the favorite color, as it was among the Society Islanders. It was so, not only among the savages of the Pacific, but also among our own ancestors, and the primitive German woman used yellow and red ochre to adorn her face and body.[3] The early Europeans seem to have been by no means always careful to distinguish between their two favorite colors of red and yellow; they saw both colors in gold, the most precious material of their adornments; the phrase 'red gold' is almost modern, and the Kirins of the Caucasus, according to Abercrombie, used for gold a word (borrowed from the Tartars), which also means red.

Young children, who are at one with savages at so many points, share their love of yellow, and usually indeed prefer it to red, though some writers, like Scripture, are inclined to account for this as due entirely, as in large measure it doubtless is, to the greater brightness of yellow. As to the reality of the preference among the children of various nations there seems to be little doubt. Preyer's child liked and discriminated yellow. Miss Shinn found that yellow was her niece's first favorite color, and, in her twenty-eighth month, she had a special fondness for daffodils and for a yellow gown. Mrs. Moore found that in the sixteenth week her child chose a yellow ball in preference to a red, and, later, in the forty-fifth week, six times out of ten preferred the yellow ball. Binet's child could not readily distinguish yellow, but was especially successful with orange. A lady who made some experiments for me with a Belgian child one year of age found that when successively offered a red poppy and a yellow poppy, then red, white and yellow poppies, finally red, white, orange and yellow poppies, she on all three occasions chose the yellow poppy, though on the third trial she hesitated between the orange and the yellow poppies; when she passed yellow poppies growing she would point to them and want them, and was also observed to contemplate admiringly a sunflower, though usually indifferent to flowers of other colors, except pink geraniums. At this age, no doubt, the preference for yellow is mainly a question of luminosity, for the careful investigations of Garbini on a large number of children showed that under the age of three they may almost be described as color-blind and experience a special difficulty in distinguishing yellow, which even at a somewhat later age is often confused with orange.[4] When children show genuine color preferences, they appear, like adults, to be only to a slight degree attracted by brilliancy, but to a large extent by depth of saturation. This was found to be the case by Aars, who in testing color preferences used colored papers of similar brilliancy and depth. His results indicate that, as Barnes had already found, children's love of yellow diminishes with age; even between the ages of four and seven, though yellow was still one of the most favorite colors of the boys, it had ceased to be in any degree a favorite color with the girls. Lobsien, at Kiel, investigating the color preferences of a large number of school girls between the ages of eight and fourteen, reached congruent results; he adopted the method of offering the colors in pairs, and found that while orange was never preferred to any other color, there was a tendency at all ages to prefer yellow to green and usually to violet, but never to red or blue.[5] These results harmonize with the conclusion of Garbini that in discrimination of color girls are more precocious than boys, though it must be added that, as in physical development, the period of adolescence brings to an end this greater rapidity of girls in development; thus Wissler, in comparing the color preferences of freshmen and seniors of both sexes, found (as Jastrow had previously found) that with age t...