February 4, 2026 • 12 mins
Have you ever cried way longer than usual when you were in a yellow room? You’ve been smacked by color psychology my friend and it’s got your number.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here. And I just realized that I
open this like a regular episode, but it's not because
Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry,
which makes this a short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
That's right, And we were talking about color psychology today.
You put this one together, and I think it's a
pretty good one because you know, it seems sort of
obvious to say that people have reactions to color, and
it is, but there's a lot more that goes into
it beyond just like seeing a color and having a
feeling like where you were raised, what kind of culture
(00:43):
you were raised in, maybe how old you are, maybe
how you're feeling at the time specific experiences with that
kind of color. And there's a field that studies this
called color psychology.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, so it's an interesting feel in that it's very
quickly figured out. There's no universality to color psychology because
of all of those factors that you just mentioned. It's
a very personal response, but the fact that people do
have emotional and psychological response is to color, which means
(01:19):
that it's just totally symbolic to them that is worth
investigating and diving into. And then also there are some
broad strokes, especially when you're talking about a large culture,
a bunch of societies that form an even bigger culture
that you can manipulate to sell things to those people
if you want to using color as a marketer advertiser.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean a lot of thought, like beyond just
your own home or whatever, how you want to paint
your room, which, by the way, we're going to color
drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Color drenching is when you paint everything in there, oh,
neat the same color, like ceiling, trim, doors, everything.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
What about in lamps and stuff too, or just the
stuff that's fastened down.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
No, no, no, just like wall, ceiling, trim, doors, everything
you would normally paint, you painted all one color. And
it sounds oppressive, but it's really kind of awesome and
it seems like a trend.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
That sounds really cool. Are you doing it? And Matt,
it seems like a Matt would be best for something
like that.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, probably, Matt, maybe semigloss, but it'll be I think
it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
That's cool man, Do you know what color you're going
to get?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Probably like a deep green, something kind of dark.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, I used to have back in the nineties, back
when burgundy and dark blue and oh yeah, hunter green
or all in fashion. I put them all together in
my bedroom and it looks knockout awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Well, I'll let you know how it goes. Okay, I'll
I'll just nudge you in bed and say, what do
you think.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Perfect?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
All right, So we were talking about the be a
thing like just painting a room or something. But you know,
a lot of thought goes into color design for logos
and like the lobby of the big corporation or what
kind of color the nurse's uniform should be or the
kid's hospital room should be. Like that's all color psychology.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
For sure. There's also color symbolism too, where your culture
basically says, hey, we believe wearing black as a sign
of mourning, Like if you're in mourning, wear black. If
you go to another culture, typically in the East, they'll say, no,
you wear white when you're in mourning. Right, So there's
not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors. It's all
(03:41):
what one culture decides that color means. Like another good
example is associating luck with green, and you can actually
trace that back to Ireland being considered the Emerald isle
leprechauns being associated with luck. So through a bunch of
cultural convolutions, the West associates green with good luck. Right
(04:03):
that you would not find that in other cultures. Right,
So there is like a real culturally bound aspect to it.
But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated
to where if you were chased by a bear in
the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to
like the color green very much, or you're not gonna
like brown because that reminds you of the color of
(04:24):
the grizzly bear, where somebody else would be like, I
was raised on a farm and everything was brown and
I love it, so I love the color brown. It
gets like that detailed in that granular The upshot of
the whole thing is that colors can't affect us, and
that in and of itself, you just it's so, we
just know that, But if you step back and actually
(04:45):
think about what's going on, it's actually kind of mind blowing,
especially in the ways it affects us.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, for sure, they have done cross cultural studies about,
you know, how it is around the world. They found
that American Japanese the concepts of warm and colors are
about the same. But in Japan blue and green are
perceived as good and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad.
Where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered
(05:13):
good and orange and red and purple bad. Yeah, And
one thing I wanted to mention about the mourning colors
is we have an African American church right around the
block from US, and they have had their fair share
of funerals over the years, and a lot of these
I've seen everybody wearing purple, and I wondered if that
was a thing in the black community or if it
(05:34):
was just something particular to the person, like that was
their favorite color.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I don't know, but I do know that purple and
gold and white and black are all depending on the
culture appropriate mourning where.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write
in and tell me, because I never feel like I
can just walk up to the gathering and say like, Hey,
was this person into purple or what's the deal? Yeah,
not the right time.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to
ask you, Yeah, you want to take a break and
come back and talk about the Crayola eight pack of colors.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Let's do it, all, right, Josh, I promised now that
(06:39):
we're back to talk about the Crayola eight But as
we do on stuff, you should know we're not going
to talk about all eight We're just going to hit
some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk
a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go
and start with red. I think we should talk about
red because that's the color that kind of has the
strongest reaction usually out of people, because red is just
(07:01):
a very big, bold, brave choice. In a lot of cases,
they say if you have a red car, you're gonna
get pulled over more often by cops. They report feelings
of strength when you wear red, or courage or aggression.
It can actually increase your heart rate and energy level.
And obviously red is why you know you paint stop
signs red because it's a real eye grabber or a
(07:25):
warning label is red because it'll catch your eye right.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
And another one, I it depends on the shade or
I guess the saturation or value, but I like orange.
Sometimes apparently a lot of people can't stand orange, and
I get that because there are colors that I can't stand,
Like what, I really don't like magenta?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
What's magenta? Is that like a purple?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, it's like a reddish purple, like like redish purple.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
What's your favorite color?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Blue? Often like a roe's egg blue. But also I
like royal blues, kind of nice dark blue, the bluer
blues rather than the darker blues. I usually kind of
lean toward. But yeah, I also like pastels.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Oh yeah, sure, you've got your a nice stable of
like pastel sweatshirts and things.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I tend to depend on the season. I really, you know,
kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and
sort of forest greens in the fall and winter and
I brighten up a bit. But I definitely love greens
and browns and hues of orange the most, I think.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I see, Yeah, but which one are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yellow? No? Orange?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, we just kind of finished orange. I mean it's
just all over the place, I think. Yeah, there's just
so many different weird associations. This list says flamboyant, energy, comfort, warmth.
I mean, you can't really put four different things that
are less associated with one another together.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, for sure, I do like black. I like wearing
black things, always have. Black is beautiful, Black is powerful.
Authoritativeness comes to mind obviously, like strength, it can be
overwhelming for a lot of people. Like usually painting walls
black is I mean, that's a that's a big choice.
I've got a couple of black black walls in my house,
(09:20):
Like my office, I have a I have one wall
that's black. Oh yeah, so like, but there are many
shades within the black, like when you go to pick
out paint colors, black is not just black. And obviously
you know, in like westerns, the black hat symbolized good,
the white hat symbolized like the you know, the bad
guy and the good guy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And in hacking too, Oh okay, yeah it's true, like
there's black hat hackers and white hat hackers. Yeah, I
we have to at least talk about yellow.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
This to me is like I think it's the most
all over color because people like yellow, but it's associated
with so many different things. Like we call people who
are cowards, they're called yellow, especially if you're an old
timey person. There's also like this idea that you might
cry longer in a yellow room, which I cannot find
(10:11):
anything to actually back that up. It's almost just become legendary,
but I guarantee there's some study that said that at
some point. But it's also considered very cheerful, right. I mean,
yellow is like the color of the smiley face and
the sun, and it's just it depends on again, not
just like your experiences with yellow or what your culture
(10:32):
says yellow is, but your mood that day. Even more important, though,
is there's not just one yellow like you talked about
how there's all these different shades of black. Yeah, all
the colors have different saturations, just how colorful they are,
their value, the brightness, the hues, or the actual different colors,
(10:53):
like all of these things, Like a pale cream pastel
yellow is going to make you feel different than a
neon yellow is. Yeah, neon yellow is going to make
you run out and buy a mountain dew. The pasto
creamy yellow is going to make you want to sit
down and have tea.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, agreed, h I gott I mean I think the
rest of these people, people can go do more color
research if they're planning their wardrobe or they're painting their
house or something. Yes, my advice is to you know,
you got to get those small, little testra sizes and
just throw a little on the wall and see what
you think. And then look at it in a bunch
(11:31):
of different light, regular daylight, because that really can change
the hue of a color.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Is what kind of light you're using flashlight? Your power
may go out at some point, you want to make
sure it looks good in that too. Yeah, for sure,
you got anything.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Else, then I got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
All right, everybody, short, Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here. And I just realized that I
open this like a regular episode, but it's not because
Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry,
which makes this a short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
That's right, And we were talking about color psychology today.
You put this one together, and I think it's a
pretty good one because you know, it seems sort of
obvious to say that people have reactions to color, and
it is, but there's a lot more that goes into
it beyond just like seeing a color and having a
feeling like where you were raised, what kind of culture
(00:43):
you were raised in, maybe how old you are, maybe
how you're feeling at the time specific experiences with that
kind of color. And there's a field that studies this
called color psychology.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, so it's an interesting feel in that it's very
quickly figured out. There's no universality to color psychology because
of all of those factors that you just mentioned. It's
a very personal response, but the fact that people do
have emotional and psychological response is to color, which means
(01:19):
that it's just totally symbolic to them that is worth
investigating and diving into. And then also there are some
broad strokes, especially when you're talking about a large culture,
a bunch of societies that form an even bigger culture
that you can manipulate to sell things to those people
if you want to using color as a marketer advertiser.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean a lot of thought, like beyond just
your own home or whatever, how you want to paint
your room, which, by the way, we're going to color
drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Color drenching is when you paint everything in there, oh,
neat the same color, like ceiling, trim, doors, everything.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
What about in lamps and stuff too, or just the
stuff that's fastened down.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
No, no, no, just like wall, ceiling, trim, doors, everything
you would normally paint, you painted all one color. And
it sounds oppressive, but it's really kind of awesome and
it seems like a trend.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
That sounds really cool. Are you doing it? And Matt,
it seems like a Matt would be best for something
like that.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, probably, Matt, maybe semigloss, but it'll be I think
it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
That's cool man, Do you know what color you're going
to get?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Probably like a deep green, something kind of dark.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, I used to have back in the nineties, back
when burgundy and dark blue and oh yeah, hunter green
or all in fashion. I put them all together in
my bedroom and it looks knockout awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Well, I'll let you know how it goes. Okay, I'll
I'll just nudge you in bed and say, what do
you think.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Perfect?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
All right, So we were talking about the be a
thing like just painting a room or something. But you know,
a lot of thought goes into color design for logos
and like the lobby of the big corporation or what
kind of color the nurse's uniform should be or the
kid's hospital room should be. Like that's all color psychology.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
For sure. There's also color symbolism too, where your culture
basically says, hey, we believe wearing black as a sign
of mourning, Like if you're in mourning, wear black. If
you go to another culture, typically in the East, they'll say, no,
you wear white when you're in mourning. Right, So there's
not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors. It's all
(03:41):
what one culture decides that color means. Like another good
example is associating luck with green, and you can actually
trace that back to Ireland being considered the Emerald isle
leprechauns being associated with luck. So through a bunch of
cultural convolutions, the West associates green with good luck. Right
(04:03):
that you would not find that in other cultures. Right,
So there is like a real culturally bound aspect to it.
But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated
to where if you were chased by a bear in
the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to
like the color green very much, or you're not gonna
like brown because that reminds you of the color of
(04:24):
the grizzly bear, where somebody else would be like, I
was raised on a farm and everything was brown and
I love it, so I love the color brown. It
gets like that detailed in that granular The upshot of
the whole thing is that colors can't affect us, and
that in and of itself, you just it's so, we
just know that, But if you step back and actually
(04:45):
think about what's going on, it's actually kind of mind blowing,
especially in the ways it affects us.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, for sure, they have done cross cultural studies about,
you know, how it is around the world. They found
that American Japanese the concepts of warm and colors are
about the same. But in Japan blue and green are
perceived as good and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad.
Where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered
(05:13):
good and orange and red and purple bad. Yeah, And
one thing I wanted to mention about the mourning colors
is we have an African American church right around the
block from US, and they have had their fair share
of funerals over the years, and a lot of these
I've seen everybody wearing purple, and I wondered if that
was a thing in the black community or if it
(05:34):
was just something particular to the person, like that was
their favorite color.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I don't know, but I do know that purple and
gold and white and black are all depending on the
culture appropriate mourning where.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write
in and tell me, because I never feel like I
can just walk up to the gathering and say like, Hey,
was this person into purple or what's the deal? Yeah,
not the right time.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to
ask you, Yeah, you want to take a break and
come back and talk about the Crayola eight pack of colors.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Let's do it, all, right, Josh, I promised now that
(06:39):
we're back to talk about the Crayola eight But as
we do on stuff, you should know we're not going
to talk about all eight We're just going to hit
some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk
a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go
and start with red. I think we should talk about
red because that's the color that kind of has the
strongest reaction usually out of people, because red is just
(07:01):
a very big, bold, brave choice. In a lot of cases,
they say if you have a red car, you're gonna
get pulled over more often by cops. They report feelings
of strength when you wear red, or courage or aggression.
It can actually increase your heart rate and energy level.
And obviously red is why you know you paint stop
signs red because it's a real eye grabber or a
(07:25):
warning label is red because it'll catch your eye right.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
And another one, I it depends on the shade or
I guess the saturation or value, but I like orange.
Sometimes apparently a lot of people can't stand orange, and
I get that because there are colors that I can't stand,
Like what, I really don't like magenta?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
What's magenta? Is that like a purple?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, it's like a reddish purple, like like redish purple.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
What's your favorite color?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Blue? Often like a roe's egg blue. But also I
like royal blues, kind of nice dark blue, the bluer
blues rather than the darker blues. I usually kind of
lean toward. But yeah, I also like pastels.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Oh yeah, sure, you've got your a nice stable of
like pastel sweatshirts and things.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I tend to depend on the season. I really, you know,
kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and
sort of forest greens in the fall and winter and
I brighten up a bit. But I definitely love greens
and browns and hues of orange the most, I think.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I see, Yeah, but which one are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yellow? No? Orange?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, we just kind of finished orange. I mean it's
just all over the place, I think. Yeah, there's just
so many different weird associations. This list says flamboyant, energy, comfort, warmth.
I mean, you can't really put four different things that
are less associated with one another together.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, for sure, I do like black. I like wearing
black things, always have. Black is beautiful, Black is powerful.
Authoritativeness comes to mind obviously, like strength, it can be
overwhelming for a lot of people. Like usually painting walls
black is I mean, that's a that's a big choice.
I've got a couple of black black walls in my house,
(09:20):
Like my office, I have a I have one wall
that's black. Oh yeah, so like, but there are many
shades within the black, like when you go to pick
out paint colors, black is not just black. And obviously
you know, in like westerns, the black hat symbolized good,
the white hat symbolized like the you know, the bad
guy and the good guy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And in hacking too, Oh okay, yeah it's true, like
there's black hat hackers and white hat hackers. Yeah, I
we have to at least talk about yellow.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
This to me is like I think it's the most
all over color because people like yellow, but it's associated
with so many different things. Like we call people who
are cowards, they're called yellow, especially if you're an old
timey person. There's also like this idea that you might
cry longer in a yellow room, which I cannot find
(10:11):
anything to actually back that up. It's almost just become legendary,
but I guarantee there's some study that said that at
some point. But it's also considered very cheerful, right. I mean,
yellow is like the color of the smiley face and
the sun, and it's just it depends on again, not
just like your experiences with yellow or what your culture
(10:32):
says yellow is, but your mood that day. Even more important, though,
is there's not just one yellow like you talked about
how there's all these different shades of black. Yeah, all
the colors have different saturations, just how colorful they are,
their value, the brightness, the hues, or the actual different colors,
(10:53):
like all of these things, Like a pale cream pastel
yellow is going to make you feel different than a
neon yellow is. Yeah, neon yellow is going to make
you run out and buy a mountain dew. The pasto
creamy yellow is going to make you want to sit
down and have tea.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, agreed, h I gott I mean I think the
rest of these people, people can go do more color
research if they're planning their wardrobe or they're painting their
house or something. Yes, my advice is to you know,
you got to get those small, little testra sizes and
just throw a little on the wall and see what
you think. And then look at it in a bunch
(11:31):
of different light, regular daylight, because that really can change
the hue of a color.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Is what kind of light you're using flashlight? Your power
may go out at some point, you want to make
sure it looks good in that too. Yeah, for sure,
you got anything.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Else, then I got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
All right, everybody, short, Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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