Abstract

Emotion is assumed to be stored in long-term memory as a concept by a feature (e.g., “tears” for “sadness”) that is a memory unit of a concept. Memory activation of emotion concepts via features is supposed to enable recognition of emotional states. Emotion concepts are associated with various perceptual features oriented toward the interior and exterior of the body. Although previous studies have revealed that internal perceptual features need to recognize emotional experiences, how external perceptual features contribute to memory representation of emotions is unclear. This study focused on sadness and aimed to identify how color, which is an external perceptual feature, represents sadness in long-term memory. We hypothesized that colors continuously represent positive and negative aspects of sadness. Participants rated the congruency between each of 99 color visual stimuli and five major emotions, six sadness-related situations, and five psychological properties. Consistent with the prediction, two bluish color groups appeared to represent sadness based on emotional congruency ratings. Colors with the highest sadness ratings were related to dark and dull bluish ones. On the other hand, lighter bluish colors mixed with green appearance were similarly congruent with both sadness and happiness. The lightness properties of these sadness-related bluish colors continuously represent sadness dominancy (sadness rating minus happiness rating). Additionally, sadness dominancy of each sadness-related color group was differently associated with sadness-related situations. These findings indicate that color features contribute to memory representation of sadness in association with situations and that color features continuously instantiate negative and positive aspects of sadness.

摘要

假设情绪通过作为概念的记忆单元的特征（例如，“眼泪”代表“悲伤”）作为概念存储在长期记忆中。通过特征激活情绪概念的记忆应该能够识别情绪状态。情绪概念与面向身体内部和外部的各种感知特征相关联。尽管之前的研究表明内部感知特征需要识别情绪体验，但外部感知特征如何有助于情绪的记忆表征尚不清楚。这项研究的重点是悲伤，旨在确定作为外部感知特征的颜色如何代表长期记忆中的悲伤。我们假设颜色不断代表悲伤的积极和消极方面。参与者评估了 99 种颜色视觉刺激与五种主要情绪、六种与悲伤相关的情况和五种心理特性之间的一致性。与预测一致，两个蓝色组似乎代表基于情绪一致性评级的悲伤。悲伤度最高的颜色与深色和暗蓝色有关。另一方面，浅蓝色混合绿色外观同样与悲伤和快乐一致。这些与悲伤相关的蓝色的亮度特性持续代表悲伤主导（悲伤等级减去幸福等级）。此外，每个与悲伤相关的颜色组的悲伤优势与悲伤相关的情况有不同的关联。