Feeling blue may alter the way you see the world. According to a new study, our emotions may make us see the world a little grayer.
In a paper, researchers claimed that feeling sadness may actually change the way we perceived colors. They found that participants of the studies are less accurate in identifying colors, particularly those in “blue-yellow axis” when they are induced to feel sad, compared to those who were “emotionally neutral” or “feel amused”.
Christopher Thorstenson, psychology researcher from the University of Rochester and the first author on the research, said: “Our results show that mood and emotion can affect how we see the world around us”.
He added that, “Our work advances the study of perception by showing that sadness specifically impairs basic visual processes that are involved in perceiving color.”
The research is published in Psychological Science. This is the first study focusing on the specific link between the emotion of sadness and our perception of color. It builds on previous research that had shown emotions influences various processes. Some works have shown a link between depressed mood and reduced sensitivity to visual contrast, meaning those who are depressed have greater difficulty identifying contrast.
Thorstenson said, “We were already deeply familiar with how often people use color terms to describe common phenomena, like mood, even when these concepts seem unrelated.”
“We thought that maybe a reason these metaphors emerge was because there really was a connection between mood and perceiving colors in a different way.”
It seems that Pixar’s “Inside Out” was spot on when it chose the color blue for sadness!