Color Preference

Explaining Color Preferences
Blue WAVE
Why do people have color preferences? Why do color preferences differ between individuals and why do they change over time? Much of our research on answering these questions is motivated by the Ecological Valence Theory (EVT), which proposes that preference for a color is determined by preference for all objects and entities associated that color. We also evaluate other theories to test their ability to explain color preferences.

Color Preference Metrics
Dandelions Single
What are effective ways to describe patterns of color preferences? How can we predict people’s preferences for colors they haven’t judged? We are constructing and evaluating models built from color space dimensions in color spaces, which provide parsimonious descriptions of complex patterns of data.
Papers on this topic
Schloss, K. B., Lessard, L., Racey, C., & Hurlbert, A. C. (online 2017). Modeling color preferences using color space metrics. Vision Research. Link

Schloss, K. B. & Palmer, S.E. (2017). An ecological framework for temporal and individual differences in color preferences. Vision Research, 141, 95-108. Link

Schloss, K. B., & Heck, I. A. (2017). Seasonal changes in color preferences are linked to variations in environmental colors: A longitudinal study of fall, i-Perception, 8, 6, 1-19. PDF

Schloss, K. B., Nelson, R., Parker, L., Heck, I. A., & Palmer, S. E. (2017). Seasonal variations in color preference. Cognitive Science, 41, 6, 1589-1612. Link

Yokosawa, K., Schloss, K. B., Asano, M., & Palmer, S. E. (2016). Ecological Effects in Cross-Cultural Differences Between U.S. and Japanese Color Preferences, Cognitive Science, 40, 7, 1590-1616.Link

Schloss, K. B. (2015). Color preferences differ with variations in color perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 19, 554-555. Link

Schloss, K. B., Hawthorne, D. & Palmer, S. E. (2015). Ecological influences of individual differences in color preferences. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics, 77, 2803-2816. Link

Strauss, E. D., Schloss, K. B., & Palmer, S. E. (2013). Color preferences change after experience with liked/disliked color objects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 5, 935-943. Link

Taylor, C., Schloss, K. B., & Palmer, S. E., & Franklin, A. (2013). Color preferences in infants and adults are different. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 5, 916-922. Link

Schloss, K. B., Poggesi, R. M., & Palmer, S. E. (2011). Effects of university affiliation and “school spirit” on color preferences: Berkeley vs. Stanford. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 498-504. PDF

Palmer, S. E. & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of color preferences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 8877-8882. PDF

Congrats to Katie Foley!

The Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin – Madison honored Katie Foley with the 2017 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for her work in our lab. Congratulations Katie, we are so excited for you!

Welcome Chris Racey!

Chris RaceyThe Schloss Visual Perception and Cognition Lab welcomes our new Postdoc, Chris Racey! Prior to arriving at UW-Madison, Chris was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow working with Prof. Anna Franklin in the Sussex Colour Group (University of Sussex). Chris’s research focuses on color cognition and the neural representation of color. He investigates various aspects of color processing, including color preference, color naming, and low level visual representations, using behavioral, psychophysical and neuroimaging methods.

 

New publication: Colorgorical: Creating discriminable and preferable color palettes for information visualization

PrintColorgorical is a new, interactive tool that generates color palettes for data visualization. Designed and validated using empirical data, Colorgorical creates palettes that allow users to balance aesthetics and discriminability.

Connor Gramazio presented Colorgorical at IEEE Vis 2016. Our paper describing Colorgorical can be found here and the implementation can be found on GitHub located here.

REFERENCE: Gramazio, C. C., Laidlaw, D. H., and Schloss, K. B. (2017). Colorgorical: Creating discriminable and preferable color palettes for information visualization, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Tools for Discovery: Karen Schloss

paint chipsKaren Schloss is the newest addition to the Living Environments Laboratory theme at WID. She was previously located at Brown University where she was the Principal Investigator at the Visual Perception and Cognition Lab. As Schloss unpacked her office at WID, we inquired about her Tools for Discovery.

Tools for Discovery: Karen Schloss