Effects of affective meanings and their strength on judgment of beauty for icon color combinations

This study argued that the strength of affective meanings evoked from color combinations and subjects' preferences of these affective meanings would sway subjects' judgment of beauty for color combinations. The adjective pairs with two opposite adjectives were deemed as affective meanings. By item analysis, 13 adjective pairs including a “Beautiful-Ugly” pair which was deemed as the scale to evaluate aesthetics of color combinations were recruited in the experiment. Thirty-nine subjects rated the intensity of the adjective pairs (IM) which the 40 color combinations presented and preference of the adjectives (PM). The IM multiplied by PM was called IMP which referred to the interaction effects of IM and PM. Regression analysis was conducted to test the effects of both IM and IMP on judgment of aesthetics of color combinations. The score of “Beautiful-Ugly” pair was deemed as a dependent variable; IM and IMP as independent variables. The outcomes showed that intensity of the affective meanings was an important factor influenced subject judgment of beauty of objects, but not subject preferences of the affective meanings.