Cross-cultural color-odor associations

PLoS One. 2014 Jul 9;9(7):e101651. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101651. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries to the color pink or red. These associations are forms of crossmodal correspondences. Recently, there has been discussion about the extent to which these correspondences arise for structural reasons (i.e., an inherent mapping between color and odor), statistical reasons (i.e., covariance in experience), and/or semantically-mediated reasons (i.e., stemming from language). The present study probed this question by testing color-odor correspondences in 6 different cultural groups (Dutch, Netherlands-residing-Chinese, German, Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, and US residents), using the same set of 14 odors and asking participants to make congruent and incongruent color choices for each odor. We found consistent patterns in color choices for each odor within each culture, showing that participants were making non-random color-odor matches. We used representational dissimilarity analysis to probe for variations in the patterns of color-odor associations across cultures; we found that US and German participants had the most similar patterns of associations, followed by German and Malay participants. The largest group differences were between Malay and Netherlands-resident Chinese participants and between Dutch and Malaysian-Chinese participants. We conclude that culture plays a role in color-odor crossmodal associations, which likely arise, at least in part, through experience.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Association*
  • China / ethnology
  • Color
  • Color Perception*
  • Cross-Cultural Comparison
  • Female
  • Germany
  • Humans
  • Malaysia
  • Male
  • Netherlands
  • Odorants
  • Olfactory Perception*
  • United States
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

Financial support was provided by an Occidental College Richter-ASP Grant, by Wageningen University, by the Ready Mind Project (I-LABS), and by the Hessian initiative for the development of scientific and economic excellence (LOEWE Neuronal Coordination Research Focus Frankfurt). Special thanks to Unilever for providing the olfactory stimuli. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.