Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research has found emotional colour connotations (red=negative, green=positive) to rapidly impact emotional judgements of faces presented in different colour contexts. However, it remains unclear whether this influence is reciprocal. We consider differences in processing speed and difficulty between perceptual (colour) and conceptual (emotion) stimuli to determine whether emotion information influences colour processing. We examined whether emotional face primes (angry/happy/neutral) influence red-green colour judgements and if this effect is greater under increased ambiguity of the colour stimuli. The findings suggest that primed emotional information can guide colour judgements. Specifically, happy face primes led to better categorisation accuracy for predominantly green stimuli, while angry face primes led to better categorisation accuracy for predominantly red stimuli. For ambiguous colour stimuli, a categorisation response bias was found for green following happy face primes. Our findings provide support for a reciprocal influence of emotional stimuli on colour judgements.