MASTER OF ARTS THESIS DEFENSE BY: Cournty Franco
When: Thursday,
December 13, 2018
12:00 PM
-
2:00 PM
Where: Liberal Arts Building 3rd Floor
Description: Subject: MASTER OF ARTS THESIS DEFENSE BY: Cournty Franco
To: Faculty, Students and Guests
From: Dr. Jennifer Fugate, Advisor
Subject: Master of Arts Thesis Defense By: Courtny Franco
Topic: Color and Emotion: Cross-cultural Perspectives
Date: December 13, 2018
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: LARTS 374
ABSTRACT:
Do native speakers across various languages agree that certain colors represent discrete emotions (e.g. anger, fear, etc.)? In the current study, I examined whether native-English (n = 50), French (n = 26), Portuguese (n = 53), and Spanish (n = 48) speakers, as well as English-bilingual individuals (n = 52), agreed on what colors (presented as twenty-eight color swatches) represented a set of twenty emotions (written as words). Specifically, I investigated whether there was shared agreement (i.e. consistency and specificity) among color-emotion pairings both within and across the four languages and bilinguals. Overall, I did not find widespread shared agreement within or across languages, with few exceptions: The color red was consistently paired with love for native-English, Portuguese, and Spanish speakers, and the color gray was consistently paired with disappointment, but only for native-English speakers. Furthermore, dark red was specific to anger, green to envy, and light red to love, but only for native-English speakers. No color-emotion pairings were both specific and consistent in any language or among bilinguals. In addition, I found that how a language labels a color better predicts emotion-color agreement than the physical properties of the color. My findings are consistent with the Theory of Constructed Emotion in which there are no diagnostic features specific to each emotion: Rather emotions are created when perceiver's use their conceptual knowledge, including language, to place more rudimentary information into discrete categories.
Open to the public.
Committee Members: Dr. Mahzad Hojjat and Dr. Mary Kayyal, Department of Psychology
Contact: Dr. Jennifer Fugate (jfugate@umassd.edu or 508.999.8397)
To: Faculty, Students and Guests
From: Dr. Jennifer Fugate, Advisor
Subject: Master of Arts Thesis Defense By: Courtny Franco
Topic: Color and Emotion: Cross-cultural Perspectives
Date: December 13, 2018
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: LARTS 374
ABSTRACT:
Do native speakers across various languages agree that certain colors represent discrete emotions (e.g. anger, fear, etc.)? In the current study, I examined whether native-English (n = 50), French (n = 26), Portuguese (n = 53), and Spanish (n = 48) speakers, as well as English-bilingual individuals (n = 52), agreed on what colors (presented as twenty-eight color swatches) represented a set of twenty emotions (written as words). Specifically, I investigated whether there was shared agreement (i.e. consistency and specificity) among color-emotion pairings both within and across the four languages and bilinguals. Overall, I did not find widespread shared agreement within or across languages, with few exceptions: The color red was consistently paired with love for native-English, Portuguese, and Spanish speakers, and the color gray was consistently paired with disappointment, but only for native-English speakers. Furthermore, dark red was specific to anger, green to envy, and light red to love, but only for native-English speakers. No color-emotion pairings were both specific and consistent in any language or among bilinguals. In addition, I found that how a language labels a color better predicts emotion-color agreement than the physical properties of the color. My findings are consistent with the Theory of Constructed Emotion in which there are no diagnostic features specific to each emotion: Rather emotions are created when perceiver's use their conceptual knowledge, including language, to place more rudimentary information into discrete categories.
Open to the public.
Committee Members: Dr. Mahzad Hojjat and Dr. Mary Kayyal, Department of Psychology
Contact: Dr. Jennifer Fugate (jfugate@umassd.edu or 508.999.8397)
Contact: > See Description for contact information
Topical Areas: General Public