What Color Is...? is a modest experiment to find out more about how, and if, people assign colors to abstract ideas and things that don't have a particular color.
This site was inspired by my 9-year-old daughter, for whom everything has a color, even numbers and all the individual letters of the alphabet. This actually has a name: grapheme–color synesthesia. Synesthesia is a condition is which experience in one sense produces effects in another sense, and so grapheme-color synesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which numbers and letters are associated with colors.
We recognize that most people are not synesthetes, or at least are not grapheme-color synesthetes. It does seem to be common, however, for people to associate colors with various abstract ideas, emotions, sounds, etc. Some associations may be cultural, and others may be completely individual. We thought it would be fun come up with a list of words and phrases and see what kinds of similarities, if any, could be found in our color associations.
I'm sure this experiment wouldn't withstand any serious examination of scientific methodology. I have, however, attempted to make the test as simple as possible, and have avoided asking for any personally identifiable information (such as email address) from participants. This was to reassure people that there is no monetary motive to this site at all, and to lower the barrier to participation as much as possible. I do ask for some basic demographic information, because I thought it could be very interesting to see how some colors may be different based on gender, age, or geographic location.
- David Hammond