“The Apparent Heaviness of Colors”, 1974-07-12 (; backlinks):
Early this century, E. Bullough showed that some combinations of colors, one above the other, are chosen as more ‘natural’ than other combinations, which tend to look top heavy. Various methods of measuring the apparent weight of colors were subsequently devised: Bullough’s preference method, tests in which the weight of colored blocks was judged either visually or directly by hand, and the ‘weighing’ of half-inch circles of colored paper at either end of a simulated balance arm with an adjustable fulcrum.
There was general agreement that red and blue were the heaviest colors, yellow the lightest. But no statistical evaluation was used in the earlier work; and as the colors were surface-illuminated, the effect of color was easily confounded with that of brightness. In fact, most investigators considered that brightness was probably a crucial factor.
In the present study, an adaptation of Monroe’s procedures, the effects of color and brightness were investigated separately using larger transilluminated stimuli, with brightness carefully controlled.
Our results show that the effect is independent of brightness. colored circles, equal in subjective brightness, differ considerably in apparent weight, while achromatic stimuli which differ in brightness are not consistently different in weight.
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