The effects of moral context on the colours of guilt and pride

ABSTRACT

There is little evidence on what colours are associated with moral emotions of guilt and pride and how a change in moral context alters colour-emotion associations. We have addressed this by manipulating the context of (im)moral vs. environmentally (un)friendly behaviours. This is because environmental behaviours are classified as moral, yet they are often driven by different moral motives. We wanted to find out whether this difference could be captured by colour-emotion associations with guilt and pride. We have used an online colour picker to examine over 400 UK participants. The results of the RGB colour model revealed that guilt was most commonly associated with red, black, green, and violet colours. However, the colours of immoral behaviours were much darker than the colours of environmentally unfriendly behaviours. In contrast, pride in moral behaviours was mostly associated with pink, violet, green and blue, whereas pride in environmentally friendly behaviours was mostly paired with green, suggesting that moral context, indeed, has an impact on colour-emotion associations of guilt and pride. In addition, our study has uncovered that colour-emotion associations of guilt and pride are comprised of a certain colour signature, rather than a single colour, and this signature varies with the alteration of context. Our study contributes to developing research in both colour and environmental fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Colour-emotion
• Context
• Guilt
• Pride
• Moral
• Pro-environmental

Highlights

• Moral context alters colour associations of guilt and pride.

• Guilt and pride are comprised of a particular colour signature.

• Environmental actions are associated with different moral drivers than moral actions.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the editor of the Social Science Journal and to anonymous reviewers for constructive critique and valuable suggestions to improve this manuscript. We also would like to thank Madeleine Stormer for the edits and UCL PALS Green Impact Team for funding this research.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by UCL PALS Green Impact Team and University College London. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.