A 128-year review confirms reliable color-emotion links

Jonauskaite and Mohr (2025) systematically reviewed 132 empirical reports on color and emotion, totaling 42,266 participants across 64 countries and spanning 1895 to 2022. They find that humans reliably associate colors with emotions, with stable cases such as yellow-joy and black-sadness, but that the mapping is many-to-many: happiness alone associates with eight different color categories. The review is the collection's authority for any statement about how stable a finding is over time.

Tells the collection which associations are robust enough to assert plainly and which are genuinely many-to-many and must be hedged.

Grade A. Systematic review, peer-reviewed.

1. Jonauskaite, D., & Mohr, C. (2025). Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of psychological research linking colours and emotions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 32(4), 1457-1486. peer reviewed
   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02615-z