Explaining Color Preferences
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.
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.
Our new article on using color space metrics to describe and predict patterns of color preference is now published online in Vision Research. 
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!
NPR’s 13.7: Cosmos & Culture featured our article on 
The 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.
Our new article reporting on how color preferences change with the seasons was just published in Cognitive Science’s Early View online.
If you are interested in applying to be a graduate student in the Schloss Visual Perception and Cognition Lab at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, please apply through the Department of Psychology 
Karen 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.