Correlated Preferences for Color and Shape

Studies have found that preferences for visual features such as colors and shapes reveal systematic tendencies, certain colors and shapes were more liked than others [1, 8, 9, 11, 13]. However, little has been known about the relationship between preferences for color and shape. Here, using an individual differences approach, we investigated whether there would be any correlations between preferences for color and shape. Sixty-nine Japanese university students rated how much they liked colors and shapes in separate sessions. The visual stimuli contained 40 colors taken from the Natural Color System, and 102 visual shapes ranging from simple 2D shapes (i.e., circle and triangle) and 2D projections of 3D objects (i.e., cone and pyramid). Results indicated that preferences for certain colors and shapes correlated with each other, the simple 2D shapes were tended to be preferred by the participants who preferred "warm" colors and the 3D shapes were tended to be preferred by the participants who preferred "cold" colors. Those results might be interpreted as manifestations of the shared semantic impressions (i.e., light heavy) between colors and shapes.