What's Your Favorite Color?

by Becozi Team Feb 15, 2020

Have you ever wondered why you prefer purple over green? Or why yellow happens to be your favorite color?

We wake up under a comforter we picked in the shade we love. We walk to the kitchen and make ourselves a cup of coffee in a mug that, once again, resembles our color preferences, be it red, green or periwinkle.

Everything from our cars to our toothbrush speaks of our color choices.

But why do we favor one color over another?

It turns out there is a great deal of psychological research on why we lean towards certain colors and stay away from others.

It has to do with the pleasure center in our brain and learned experienced that are associated positively with color. For example if your childhood bedroom walls were painted in forest green and you have positive experiences as a child in that room, chances are you will like forest green as an adult.

We rate colors highly if we have a positive association with it, lower if we have a negative one.

In a study done by psychologists Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss of UC Berkeley that was published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Palmer and Schloss argued that our preference for colors is adaptive and helps us survive as a species, as we are attracted to objects with colors that are good for us rather than what we perceive as bad.

"The idea is that the more experience-based feedback that a person receives about a particular color that is associated with a positive experience, the more the person will tend to like that color. They proposed that in general, people should favor colors associated with clear sky and clean water (blue and cyans for example) and be repulsed by colors associated with negative reactions (brown, for example, which is associated with rotting food.)" (source)

Fascinating, isn't it? And here we thought that we loved purple just because.

As a fun exercise think of the positive experiences you associate with your favorite color. Was your toy truck red? Or did your favorite doll always wear a blue dress? Think about what makes you love those colors and share with us in comments - we'd love to hear about your positive color associations!

And if you'd like to make even more positive color associations, check out our rich color variety of chunky yarns:

Chunky chenille selection of 35 colors!

Two new colors are coming on around March 10 - pale yellow and sage green.

Jumbo chenille - 19 colors and a few new ones coming on the same date!

Merino wool - 28 colors! Many colors are only $20/lbs for a short time!

And of course Variegated colors chenille - super bright and fund yarn to knit with!

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Watch our new video "How to hand crochet a cat bed" with our Jumbo chenille yarn