Red color facilitates the detection of facial anger - But how much?

PLoS One. 2019 Apr 17;14(4):e0215610. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215610. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The color red seems to be consistently associated with the concept of anger. Beyond semantic associations, it has been suggested that the color red enhances our ability to perceive anger in faces. However, previous studies often lack proper color control or the results are confounded by the presence of several emotions. Moreover, the magnitude of the (potential) effect of red has not been quantified. To address these caveats, we quantified the effect of facial color and background color on anger with psychometric functions measured with the method-of-constant-stimuli while facial hue or surround hue was varied in CIELAB color space. Stimulus sequences were generated by morphing between neutral and angry faces. For the facial color, the average chromaticity of the faces was shifted by ΔE 12/20 in red, yellow, green and blue directions. For the background color, the hue was either neutral or saturated red, green or blue. Both facial redness and surround redness enhanced perceived anger slightly, by 3-4 morph-%. Other colors did not affect perceived anger. As the magnitude of the enhancement is generally small and the effect is robust only in a small subset of the participants, we question the practical significance of red in anger recognition.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Anger*
  • Color Perception / physiology*
  • Facial Expression*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Recognition, Psychology*
  • Skin Pigmentation*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Grant 287506, The Academy of Finland, https://www.aka.fi (MO). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.