As well as posting information on specific deductions and making lists, I thought I'd share some other psychological stuff that could be useful along the way, especially in marketing and persuasion.
This is about color psychology, as in, how people interpret the meanings of colors consciously and subconsciously. This information is based on various online infographics, which are based mostly on the U.S. and Europe. However, there are some other interpretations, and I will add them as I find them. Most of these are meanings that people have assigned to colors over time, but they nonetheless react to them due to the prevalence of that interpretation.
I'm going in rainbow order, by the way.
Red: In the West, red represents things such as action, adventure, energy, anger, aggression, courage, danger, strength, power, violence, urgency, impulse, and passion. Deep reds suggest maturity and elegance, and warm brick reds suggest strength and sturdiness. However, red is also commonly associated with blood and sin for obvious reasons.
In China, red is a color of good luck and often used in weddings and other celebrations. In some religions, such as Christianity, it is a color of sacrifice. In South Africa, it is a color of mourning. Communism and the US Republican Party both use red to symbolize their parties. Other cultures, however, generally interpret it to represent success, life, purity, and other positive things, similar to in the West. Many countries use it to mean "stop." In the popular show "Star Trek," people in red shirts always die, or so I've heard. Whether this is connected to the "danger" interpretation, I don't know, but that is what I suspect.
Orange: In the West, as well as other places, orange has similar meanings to red. However, it also represents warmth and vitality, as well as friendliness, trustworthiness, and invitingness and is commonly used on sale items. It is commonly used on lifesaving devices and other things that are supposed to be easily visible. Perhaps because of the similarities with red, it is seen as fun and playful. It's like red, only with a calmer energy to it. Also the color of the royal family in the Netherlands.
Yellow: Virtually universally, yellow represents optimism, happiness, clarity, and sunlight. It is commonly associated with deities and enlightenment in various religions. Motivation and creativity are also suggested. As an attention-catching color, it is used in marketing to attract customers and in warning signs. However, despite its generally bright interpretation, it is also a color of cowardice in Europe, the color of mourning in Egypt, a color of courage in Japan, a color of royalty in China, a color of corruption in some religions, and a color of merchants in India. You will obviously need to know your audience when using yellow. In the Harry Potter books, it's the color of Hufflepuffs, one of the friendliest houses at the magical school of Hogwarts. And am I surprised? Not really.
Gold: Shiny, luxurious, divine, glowing, radiant, and valuable to many cultures. Represents God's presence in Christianity, glory and divinity in Judaism, wisdom in Buddhism, and, when combined with green, paradise in Islam.
Light Green: Green is commonly associated with nature, ecology, and the environment all over the world because it is the color of many plants due to chlorophyll which is created by chloroplasts and aids in the process of photosynthesis, which is the process that plants use to get energy from the Sun...okay, I'm rambling here. Anyway, since nature and plants grow, and in turn help the rest of us consumers, first level or otherwise, grow, green is in turn associated with rebirth, fertility, growth, hope, and the general state of being new. Balance and harmony add to this peaceful, circle-of-life ideology. Light green, specifically, is soothing, calm, and refreshing. In Ireland, it represents the whole country, as well as the prevalent Catholic religion. In China and Japan, it represents life and health (other presumably nature-based interpretations). In the US, it is commonly used around Christmas (a Christian gift-giving holiday that's actually rather commercialized here) and to represent money, because American money is green. (To those of you who haven't been to America, the fact that when Americans see green, they often think about money more than nature says a lot about the country as a whole.)
Dark Green: Basically like light greens, the nature connection perhaps greater. It's also woodsy, traditional, luxurious, and prosperous. It sometimes suggests greed because darker green=more money, in the American interpretation. In Harry Potter, green is the color of Slytherins, a Hogwarts house full of people who are widely considered to be evil. This is possibly because of the association with money and greed.
Teal/Turquoise Blue/Light Blue: Blue is commonly used in marketing, as it has a lot of positive interpretations in a lot of places. Some interpret it to represent trust, safety, security, and peace of mind. Some use it to represent intelligence, wisdom, and inspiration. (I like this one myself.) Blue is even a color of tranquility, calmness, and soothing. Like yellow, it often has religious interpretations, possibly because it is the color of the sky and heaven, as yellow is the color of the Sun, a prominent heavenly body. Christians consider it to be the color of Christ, Jews consider it a holy color, and Hindus consider it to be the color of Krishna, one of their many deities. In Iran, it is a color of heaven and spirituality, as well as mourning. One culture, however, that does not associate blue with positivity, is the Cherokee culture of North America. They consider blue to be a color of trouble and defeat. I'm sure that there are other cultures with different interpretations of it too, so do your research.
Dark Blue: Dark blue has most of the same meanings as light blue; I just put them there so I wouldn't have to repeat. Common in business as a "serious"color, often worn by Western professionals and an acceptable color to write important things in, probably due to readability. US Democrat color.
Purple: Due to the use of expensive purple dyes in Europe for the clothing of royalty, purple is commonly used in the West to signify nobility, wealth, and, by extension, arrogance. (I like this interpretation too...not only do I look okay in purple clothes, I also look rather good in a crown.) Purple is also an imaginative, creative, magical, mysterious, quirky kind of color, probably because it is not used very much in modern Western government and business, so it's very free and unaffiliated. It can be dramatic, enchanting, and expressive. Purple also has a spiritual, introspective connotation. However, in many countries, it is the color of mourning and/or death. In Judaism, it represents purification of sin. Another color where you really have to know your audience. Lighter shades are similar to pink, romantic and springy. (see below)
Pink: It isn't really on the rainbow spectrum, so I decided to place it after purple. In the West, it's often a girly, feminine, romantic, lovey-dovey, innocent, happy color. However, it sometimes broadcasts more general messages of gentleness, tranquility, compassion, and softness. More muted shades of pink are considered to be wistful, sentimental, and nostalgic, possibly due to the greater popularity of the color in earlier times, such as the Victorian Era in the West.
Brown: So, this color I'm writing in is actually a dark red, I think, but it looks like brown to me, and it's the color of red velvet cake anyway, so I don't care. If it's not readable, though, please let me know. (I highlighted that part in white/black/however it comes out on the blog [I hope] so you can in fact read whether it's readable or not...you know what I mean.) Anyways, brown is the color of the Earth, and, at least in the West, a color of stability, trustworthiness, credibility, simplicity, and general back-to-basics methodology. Also a color of comfort in some places, but a color of mourning in parts of Asia. I kind of see how those could go together, though.
White: I'm not at all sure how this will come out on the blog page, as it automatically turns black to white, but here goes. White is a color of purity, health, peace, and other such pure things in the West, and even other places, which kind of makes sense, as white is the absence of color. White absorbs no light. However, this led to the idea that having lighter hair and skin was better than having darker hair and skin, in many places actually, which made no sense and has led to years of discrimination and general irrationality. This is leading to a new idea that white is the color of mayonnaise, bureaucracy, American suburbia, and other things that lack color, culture or flavor. Sterility and simplicity describe this well. That's fine by me, because I always thought white to be rather boring myself, especially in comparison to black.
Cream/Ivory: Similar to white, only a little more substantial. Similar connotations of blandness.
Tan/Beige: Very conservative, very bland. Not necessarily at the same time though. A lot like white and cream/ivory.
Black: This will probably come out in white on the blog, but at least I can highlight it in black if it doesn't work out. Black is all the colors mixed together into one! Black is everything! (I might be slightly biased here as I wear a lot of black.) Black has had a lot of negative interpretations, such as death, evil, negativity, intimidation, and other undesirable things. This doesn't really make sense, and it has also led to the idea of dark hair and skin being negative, which is (still) irrational, and even makes people less likely to adopt darkly colored pets. However, in some cultures, black represents health, stability, mystery, and other positive aspects. The use of black to represent mystery is spreading more, which a deductionist like myself can certainly appreciate. Power and elegance are similar positive connotations, which I can definitely appreciate.
Gray: A color of moderation if there ever was one. Between black and white, absorbing color to some degree but not completely. Calm, middle-of-the-road, neutral messages all around.
This is what I have for now; adding more later.
Signing off,
SM
Oh, and here are my sources. Some of them I couldn't get good links for, so I couldn't include them, but most of the facts came from these ones:
-http://www.webpagefx.com/blog/web-design/psychology-of-color-infographic/
-something from this awfully confusing page (I found these through Pinterest): http://www.ucreative.com/inspiration/35-cool-infographics-for-web-and-graphic-designers/
-http://visual.ly/meaning-colour-marketing
-http://visual.ly/psychology-colour
-something supposedly from here: http://cheezburger.com/7941226496?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+graphjam+%28GraphJam%3A+Pop+culture+for+people+in+cubicles.%29
-another one for which the link lead to a blog post somebody wrote about the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and a ton of things you could do with it and not an actual infographic
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