Not understanding "favorite color"

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I love all colors and can't choose one as a favorite. But what really bothers me about colors is the way psychologists try to link emotions or feelings to colors. I think that is rubbish. If I'm angry the color "red" does not relate in any way to my anger or any other color either. Sayings like "I was so mad that I was seeing red" is ridiculous to me. I guess that idea came from the bull ring when the matador waves a red flag or cape to get the bull to charge. There's a whole psychology based on color and what emotion each color represents. And then there is that phenomenon about auras and what color aura people are emitting. That's bunk too, in my opinion.

I underlined the sentence that proves to me that color therapy is bunk. As they say, it's all subjective. Otherwise how could the red area of the spectrum "evoke" such a wide range of emotions. I think content is far more important than color in art therapy. When I was a kid I used to close my eyes and pick a color from my crayon box and whatever color I picked was the color I used to color what ever object or piece of the drawing I was filling in with color. Some people got blue faces, some got red. It was all by chance and had nothing to do with what I was feeling.

I could go on and on about this subject but I will restrain myself and STOP now which brings to mind the "Stop" light which has brainwashed us into thinking that:
Red means Stop
Yellow means Caution
Green means Go

Could be.....but it could also refer to the phenomenom of "red mist" that is said to make a very angry person temporarily see the world with a red tinge:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=red+mist
(see definition no.2)

I don't really have a favourite colour either. Depending on their context, they can all be good or bad.

Nor do I have much faith in psychology tests based on colour preferences.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom ... o=EJ299316
"Administered the Luscher Color Test and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory to 42 counseling graduate students. Personality reports were written from test results, and the degree of agreement was rated. Results showed little agreement between the two, suggesting cautious use of the Color Test."
Perhaps that's why shrinks don't seem to use it these days.

Personally I prefer the notroxide tracecs like NO and NO2.

My favourite colour is "clear".

A more interesting question would be "What color or colors do you absolutely hate?" I think that might tell you something about a person. My theory is that a really well balanced person would not have an aversion to any color. Also I think society puts prejudice against certain colors into peoples' minds. For example, for a long time, though this has recently changed, men shied away from wearing pink because pink is/was, by society's standards, a feminine color and god forbid a man should wear pink and be considered not masculine. Stupid, absolute,ly stupid. Yellow also falls into this ridiculous stereotype, as society associates yellow with cowardice. A self-confident person should be able to wear any color that they like. Culture also plays a role in this type of color prejudice. In Mediterranean countries the houses are beautiful pale shades of pink, yellow and other pastels. In some communities,in the USA at least, if you were to paint or side your house a color that didn't conform to the majority's color preferences for houses, you would catch all kinds of flak from your neighbors, and in up-scale communities they might even draw up a petition and put pressure on you to change your house color. Sheer stupidity. There are numerous other examples of color prejudice and it really makes you wonder where it comes from. I think people on the spectrum, or people off the spectrum for that matter, who are equally appreciate of all colors, to the point where choosing a favorite is difficult to do, are much better adjusted. And no, I'm not saying that if you have a favorite color you are a nut-case or have "issues." Having a favorite color is much different than "hating" or having an aversion to a particular color. For many years I avoided wearing bright colors in an attempt to blend in or to not attract attention. Now I love bright colors and dark colors as well and think I am better udjusted than I use to be, when it comes to colors at least.

For me a "favorite color" is a color I like to stare at all by itself for hours on end. I used to have paint sample cards from hardware stores of a certian shade of green(simaliar to the WP alien) and I could stare at it for hours on end. Vivid greens have always been my favorite colors. I think to NT's and people who genunily lack creativity and artistic vision, a "favorite color" is a color that they would perfer to wear the most and decorate with.

I've always been pretty definitive when it comes to favorites.
My favorite color is a greenish sort of teal (kind of like a more saturated toothpaste color), and I own so many things in this color... shirts, blankets, toothbrushes... if it's available in that color, I'll choose it, consciously or not.
Though when I was little I never could pick a favorite color. I'd always chose what other people didn't (so if a group of people were saying favorite colors, and everyone said blue, I would say orange).

My favourite colour is purple. It has been so for a long time, though when I was younger it changed quite a lot (it was normally pink or purple or blue, sometimes black).

cosmiccat - I'm interested to know, why would disliking a certain colour mean someone is not well-adjusted or something?

I've hated the colour orange in most contexts for as long as I can remember. I don't know why, it's just one of those irrational things. I don't know, most people don't seem to have certain colours they dislike, they just have colours they like and colours they are indifferent towards.

Quoting GinaGhettoPrincess

Well, the way I see it is like this: If someone shows a really strong dislike or aversion to a certain color there must be a reason which makes them react so negatively to that color. I can't imagine someone just hating a color for no good reason. They must be connecting some experience, some place, some person, some thing with that color in order to be so strongly repulsed by it. Maybe a mean teacher who wore a bright yellow dress on a day when she humiliated you, or an abusive father was wearing a green shirt when he beat you in a drunken rage, or a certain room of the house where your grandmother suffered and died had apricot walls.

I should have been more specific. I am talking about a strong aversion to a certain color, not just an ordinary dislike. When a person "hates" a color to such a degree they must be linking that color to an unpleasant or negative memory. This is what I believe.

For example, my husband "hates" brown. I mean he really hates it. I love brown, all shades of brown and many of my clothes are in the brown family of colors. Whenever we went clothes shopping together he would always steer me away from brown clothing. I gave a lot of thought to it and I have come to the conclusion it was the abusive nuns that he had in school who wore brown habits. Imagine, going to school everyday, being humiliated and abused by neurotic, sadistic nuns in brown habits. Chances are you would cringe and feel all those emotions you felt as a helpless child whenever you saw the color brown, and you sure as heck wouldn't want your wife to wear that color.

Disclaimer: Not all nuns are neurotic, cruel and abusive, but the ones who taught at my husband's school were definitely not fit to be around young impressionable children. I have known very many kind, beautiful and heroic nuns so I don't want to give the impression that I'm a nun hater because I'm not. My husband is.

Interesting theory. I wonder what it is that makes me hate orange. *searches through early memories*

I read a book where it was mentioned that the main character hates orange as well. It was because when her mother died she had to wait in the waiting room of the hospital where all the chairs were orange.

Quoting Gina

Maybe you were forced to eat carrots or squash. "Eat your carrots! There good for your eyes."



That's very interesting. I am fond of orange. Always have been. Many people will not wear orange.

Hmmm. I wonder what's behind "A Clockwork Orange." I read the book long ago but can't remember what it's about. Something about a mental ward and coded language I think.

As I get older, having a "favorite" means nothing to me. I have a diverse set of interests and I cull those interests depending upon the mood and what catches my attention at the time.

whoopsssss...i love carrots xD..

Well, my favourite color is Violet (or something dark like black). I think it's just personal preference and could change over time.

The hero (Alex) is a vicious teenage lout who is arrested and then "cured" by condition-reflex therapy. His behaviour indeed becomes exemplary as judged from the outside, but, in his own words, he is merely a "clockwork orange" - organic on the outside but mechanical on the inside.....seems rather a clumsy metaphor to me, but the theme of the book is basically to question the wisdom of a Pavlovian cure. Indeed, the effect of the therapy is short-lived and he is soon back to his evil self. In Anthony Burgess' original novel, there is a final chapter in which Alex finally grows up and by his own free will renounces his violent past. Sadly, this chapter was omitted from most American versions of the book and from the film.

Quite why Burgess chose an orange for inclusion in the title, I don't know. Possibly it was just a marketing ploy - "clockwork orange" is a phrase that tends to stick in the mind easily, and back in the 60's, it would have been a very trendy phrase, reminiscent of the names of many psychedelic rock bands of the era. I doubt whether colour preference had much to do with it.

I think you may be onto something with this idea that colour aversion is rooted in some kind of past negative association (which rather like the book is about a conditional reflex), but I also suspect that sometimes it could be just a brain-wiring quirk, a kind of sensory issue with certain wavelengths of light, or some less traumatic experiences such as peer group pressure. I quite dislike pink, but I remember having no problem at all with Lady Penelope's pink Rolls Royce when I was about 13, which suggests that I've somehow learned to dislike the colour. I've had some nasty things happen to me over my life since then, but I don't think that the colour pink featured in any of them.

Maybe

I've never liked orange juice, either, which was annoying when I went to friends' parties when I was a kid, because it was always assumed that "all children like orange juice", so there was rarely an alternative (except sometimes they had blackcurrant squash, which I like).

Quoting ToughDiamond

Thanks for refreshing my memory of A Clockwork Orange. I agree about color preference and aversion being also sometimes a sensory issue. Yes also to peer pressure and the ever-changing dictates of fashion.

@Gina
I love carrots and squash, not fond of OJ. Do love grapefruit juice, especially ruby-red.

I always like things in purples or blues. Especially purples. Any shade of each, lilac being my favorite.