I don’t know how or when my obsession began, but I love the color orange. I don’t remember a time when this was not the case. I would wear down the orange stick in my crayon box until I could no longer hold it between my fingers. I remember my favorite Matchbox car was an orange 1965 Mustang. I even picked out an orange shag carpet as my nap matt in kindergarten. I had a pair of orange pants that I wore until they were threadbare. My mother secretly discarded them to maintain our family name.
My affection for the color orange remains today. Loving a particular color is a bizarre and powerful phenomenon. I had a high school friend who publically confessed his favorite color was brown and lost a bit of social capital in the process. We all have different preferences and colors we enjoy, but what exactly is behind these feelings? In 2007 Ai Yoto investigated the physiological effects of color on the brain. He measured blood pressure, brain activity and used a questionnaire to probe this mystery.
One of his conclusions was that red activated the area of the brain responsible for perception and attention much more than the color blue. Prior to Yoto’s study in 2000 a group of psychologists examined the cultural perceptions and meanings of color and concluded that the colors blue and green were well liked among various cultures and shared similar meanings. Red was well liked too, but the cultural meaning varied.
It is clear that we do not completely understand color, but its profound impact is unquestionable.
Due to the mysteries surrounding color, the way we utilize it and discuss it is curious and complex. Companies use various colors to brand their products. In that 2000 study it was found that consumers strongly associated red with Coca-Cola, blue with IBM, and green and white with Canada Dry ginger ale. The University of Iowa football coach painted the opposing team’s locker room pink in hopes it would make them more passive. Southerners will often paint the ceiling of their porch a particular shade of blue because they believe it keeps the bugs away. It was recently reported that the 2018 Norwegian Olympic speed skating team has exchanged their iconic red body suits for blue after determining that blue is faster than red – an assertion that has perplexed the scientifically minded. The Dutch team is now considering changing their orange suits to blue as well, and this is where I draw the line – abandoning the color orange is absurd. Orange is obviously swifter than blue.