Have Color Representations in Books Changed Over the Past 200 Years? An Empirical Analysis Based on the Google Books Ngram Corpus

Color significantly shapes our perceptions of the world, and extensive scientific research has explored various aspects of color, including color linguistics, aesthetics, color and marketing, color therapy, and color psychology. Notably, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the psychological domain of color in recent years. However, limited scholarly attention has been given to studying the changes in color representations and emotions over the decades. To address this gap, we utilized word embedding models of Google Books Ngrams corpus to examine the most strongly associated entities and traits with colors and their evolution in color emotions over 200 years. Analyzing three emotional dimensions—pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD), we found that red, green, white, black, orange, purple, brown, and pink were related to the exuberant type (+P+A+D) in PAD emotional space. In contrast, blue was linked to the relaxed type (+P-A+D), and yellow constituted the anxious type (-P+A-D). Among all basic English color terms, the emotion-driven perceptions associated with white, brown, and pink have significantly changed over time.

色彩极大地塑造了我们对世界的感知，学界已开展广泛的科学研究探索色彩的诸多维度，涵盖色彩语言学、色彩美学、色彩与营销、色彩疗法以及色彩心理学。值得注意的是，近年来学界对色彩心理学领域的研究兴趣与日俱增。然而，数十年来针对色彩表征及其关联情感变化的学术研究仍相对不足。为填补这一研究空白，本研究采用谷歌图书Ngram语料库（Google Books Ngrams corpus）的词嵌入模型（word embedding models），探究了与各类色彩关联最为紧密的实体与特质，以及200余年间色彩情感的演化轨迹。本研究分析了愉悦度（pleasure）、唤醒度（arousal）与支配度（dominance）（PAD）三大情感维度，结果显示红色、绿色、白色、黑色、橙色、紫色、棕色与粉色均属于PAD情感空间中的旺盛型（+P+A+D）。与之相对，蓝色归属于放松型（+P-A+D），而黄色则属于焦虑型（-P+A-D）。在所有基础英语色彩术语中，与白色、棕色及粉色相关的情感驱动感知随时间推移发生了显著变化。