The purpose of this study is to identify whether young children can associate colors with emotion, and if there are any changes across development. For this purpose, a study consisting of three tasks (questionnaire regarding color preferences, color-emotion matching task, and color assessment task) was designed, and was conducted among four age groups of elementary school aged 7–12 (M = 8.11), junior high school aged 13–15 (M = 14.1), high school aged 16–18 (M = 17.1), and university students aged 19–23 (M = 20.1). In total, 172 subjects participated in this study. Red and blue hues were most favorite colors across all age groups. However, gold was the most favorite color among elementary school students (p < 0.05). White was the most popular color for the bedroom (p < 0.01), followed by light blue. In the color-emotion matching task, elementary school students associated all the negative emotions with black (p < 0.01). In addition, elementary school students used a greater number of color varieties for the emotions compared to other participants, and the number of color varieties decreased as the subjects grow older. From the color assessment task, it was observed that elementary school students are the only participants who assessed all the colors with all the feelings of very unhappy/unhappy, neutral, and happy/very happy (p < 0.05). The results further suggested that junior high, high school, and university students seem to agree more on color assessments and the results are quite similar across these age groups. In sum, it was concluded that children do associate colors with emotion. Moreover, the changes across development were observed in all the three tasks.

中文翻译：

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日本学生颜色、颜色偏好和情绪之间的关联：从小学到大学

本研究的目的是确定幼儿是否可以将颜色与情绪联系起来，以及在发育过程中是否有任何变化。为此，设计了一项由三个任务（颜色偏好问卷、颜色情绪匹配任务和颜色评估任务）组成的研究，并在 7-12 岁的四个小学年龄组中进行（M  = 8.11）， 13-15岁初中（M  =14.1）、16-18岁高中（M  =17.1）和19-23岁大学生（M  =20.1）。总共有 172 名受试者参与了这项研究。红色和蓝色是所有年龄段最喜欢的颜色。然而，金色是小学生最喜欢的颜色（p < 0.05)。白色是卧室最受欢迎的颜色（p  < 0.01），其次是浅蓝色。在色彩-情绪匹配任务中，小学生将所有负面情绪与黑色联系起来（p  < 0.01）。此外，与其他参与者相比，小学生在情绪中使用了更多的颜色品种，并且随着受试者年龄的增长，颜色品种的数量减少了。从颜色评估任务中观察到，小学生是唯一以非常不快乐/不快乐、中性和快乐/非常快乐的感觉来评估所有颜色的参与者（p < 0.05)。结果进一步表明，初中、高中和大学生似乎更同意颜色评估，并且这些年龄组的结果非常相似。总之，得出的结论是，儿童确实将颜色与情感联系起来。此外，在所有三个任务中都观察到了整个开发过程中的变化。