Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Vol 19(1), Feb 2025, 29-37; doi:10.1037/aca0000530
According to the ecological valence theory (Palmer & Schloss, 2010), color preferences derive from the emotional valences of color-related objects. Color, translucency, and sweetness are regarded as sensory cues that aid in the identification of ripe fruit. After conducting a literature review that demonstrated humans’ innate preference for sweetness and sugar, we posited that the preference for transparent and translucent colors might be associated with the identification of ripe fruits as sources of sugar. A total of 200 respondents provided preference and appetite ratings for 18 stimuli comprising six colors with three different levels of transparency. The respondents identified the tastes they expected the stimuli to have. The results were recorded for both men (29.5%) and women (70.5%). Overall, we found that the transparent and translucent color stimuli received higher average preference and appetite ratings than the opaque stimuli. Notably, our analysis showed correlations between respondents’ preferences and their appetite ratings for translucent red, yellow-green, and purple, the colors the respondents associated sweetness with. This study highlights the potential association between preferences for translucent colors and identification of sweet-tasting foods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)