Color-emotion associations are broadly shared across 30 nations

Jonauskaite and colleagues (2020) asked 4,598 participants in 30 nations, speaking 22 native languages, to associate 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. The resulting color-emotion profiles were strikingly similar across the world, with a mean pattern-similarity coefficient of r = .88. Crucially, the residual differences were not random: a machine-learning model showed that nations closer in language and geography produced more similar profiles. This is the single best quantitative anchor for the collection's thesis that color meaning is mostly shared but measurably tuned by culture.

Establishes the baseline against which every culture-specific claim in the collection is read: shared tendency first, local tuning second.

Grade A. Cross-national experimental study, peer-reviewed.

1. Jonauskaite, D., Abu-Akel, A., Dael, N., Oberfeld, D., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Al-Rasheed, A. S., ... Mohr, C. (2020). Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity. Psychological Science 31(10), 1245-1260. peer reviewed
   https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620948810