The Colour Wheel of Emotion

The pitfalls of depression have now been labelled with its own colour; the shade of grey to be exact. This to us screams connotations of extreme gloominess and misery, and it seems people who suffer from anxiety or depression agree, as when asked to pick a colour out of several, their first inclination was to choose grey. Colours are often used metaphorically in literature to convey emotion, such as the classic ‘I was feeling a bit blue’. However, there is now scientific interest linked to our colour preferences. Recent research suggests that colours can provide an insight into how we see ourselves, while allowing us to express our emotions more effectively than we would with verbal communication.

Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology Peter Whorwell of the University Hospital in South Manchester says that ‘colours are frequently used to describe emotions such as being green with envy and in the blues’. Whorwell and a team of researchers created a colour wheel of eight colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink and brown and then broke them down into four shades of each. They then added black, white and four shades of grey.

Next they recruited 105 healthy adults, 110 anxious adults and 108 depressed adult. The wheel was produced to indicate people’s preferred pigment in accordance to their relative state of mind. The participants were then asked to pick their favourite colour, the colour they were most “drawn to,” and the colour that described their day-to-day mood based over the last several months.  Whether depressed, anxious or healthy, people’s favourite colour was blue and they were most drawn to yellow. However when it came to mood, the groups diverged. The group of people, who were neither anxious nor depressed, clinically speaking, picked yellow to represent their mood; while the anxious/depressed among them preferred grey. According to the researchers, the colour grey implies "a dark state of mind, and a colourless monotonous disinterest in life." However yellow is associated with "happiness, cheerfulness and a positive emotional state."

Whorwell and others are hoping that the colour wheel can be used in the medical field to assess health status/mood and to diagnose depression. The technique may be beneficial in circumstances where the participants cannot effectively communicate verbally, such as withdrawn children, people with communication problems or those of whom English is not their first language.