Effects of color on perceived temperature H-N Ho1, D Iwai2, Y Yoshikawa2, J Watanabe1, S Nishida1 |
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1Human Information Science Laboratory, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan |
| Although concepts of associating color with temperature (eg. blue is cold) has been widely applied in design, it remains unclear whether color could affect our sensations of warmth and coldness. Here we manipulated the color of an object surface and examined its effect on the perceived temperature of the object in contact. In the subjective criteria condition, the participants touched the object surface and responded whether this surface felt warm (or cold). In the objective criteria condition, the participants judged whether the surface felt warmer (or colder) than a reference. In both conditions, the temperature of the surface varied adaptively based on participants' responses to search for the warm (cold) boundary, that is the temperature at which the sensation transits from warm (cold) to neutral. We found that the warm boundary of a blue surface was significantly lower than that of a red surface in the subjective criteria condition, while such effect was not found in the objective criteria condition. Our results indicated that the perceived temperature of an object can be affected by its color. Like size-weight illusion, this effect might result from perceptual rescaling based on prior expectations, and it would diminish when an external reference was provided. |
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