symbols and colors

Color has evolved over the course of the ages to symbolize many different things. Through cultural and social construction, colors have taken on psychological properties of their own, but none of these properties are concrete. For different cultures and times, colors can have very different meanings. For instance, in the United States it is almost ingrained in our heads that weddings are associated with the color white, perhaps alluding to the virginal and pure. In Japan and other parts of Asia though, the color white was often worn at funerals.
Color theorist Faber Birren created categories for the varying levels of color symbolism. These included general appearance, mental associations, direct associations, objective impressions, and subjective impressions. Each color has not only one association, but many when viewed in different contexts. Red can symbolize St. Valentine's day, but it is also often associated with rage. Often green is associated with the eco-friendly movement, but it is also symbolic of money.
There are many people that believe that certain colors will yield a consistent and specific response from people. There are many psychologists though that have found through various studies that there is no clear response to color and that emotional responses to certain colors were inconsistent. Regardless of this information, many people used color to heal. Called "color consultants", these people try to alleviate stress through color. For instance, they've found that babies cry less when the color of there room is not yellow and prisoners are less violet when their rooms are pink. This is not a new fad though. For centuries, people have been using color to heal.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm

What color is the letter A? B? C? Some people hardly have to think and can immediately tell you the color of a letter, a number, or even a sound. This experience is called synesthesia, and for most people who experience it, it is an immensely pleasurable sensation. A sentence can take on a rich array of colors in the mind of the synesthete. The particular form of synesthesia that deals with color is called grapheme and is completely involuntary.
Dr. Richard Cytowic defines synesthesia with the five following factors:

1. Synesthetic images are spatially extended, meaning they often have a definite 'location'.
2. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.
3. Synesthetic percepts are consistent and generic (i.e. simple rather than imagistic).
4. Synesthesia is highly memorable.
5. Synesthesia is laden with affect.

Source: (Cytowic 2002, pp. 67-69; Cytowic 2003, pp. 76-77):

Many people to experience this phenomenon are able to utilize it in a creative and helpful way such as painting or as an aid for memorization. One woman recalls learning how to spell by remembering what color scheme it had. The prevalence of this phenomenon is unknown ranging everywhere from 1 in 20 to 1 in 20,000, but most researchers agree the cause is genetic. It is not uncommon to see a large percentage of synesthetes in families. Below is a link about a man who experiences synthesia : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1079759211897095671&q=Synesthesia&total=444&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/

Colors and Others

We don't all see the same, and when we apply that statement towards different species, it becomes something more than a matter of opinion. It's very hard to assess what other animals see when they don't possess the capability of human communication, obviously, but many scientists attribute the ability to see color towards certain genes. For example, a dichromat lacks certain genes and proteins that enable him/her to see color, while a trichromat is able to distinguish colors outside of the white/gray/black spectrum.
It is argued that birds have the most interesting color vision out of any group of animals, and it makes sense when you think about the rich, colorful plummage that many birds have. Most likely an evolutionary mutation allowed them to experience colors in the ultraviolet range. So there are many colors birds can see that we humans cannot. This might be attributed to the extra cone cell that is found in the avian eye.
Cones are the cells found in our eyes that allow us to interpret color. The cone cells found in bird's eyes allow them to see color in bright light and double cone cells allow them to see color in normal light situations. The human eye contains 200,000 cones per square millimeter, while there are 400,000 cone cells per square millimeter found in the House Sparrow. It's amazing to think what it must be like to see like a bird!


Sources: 1.http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/16/pandavision_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20061016093000
2. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=23047