Summary & Critique of “Color Psychology and Color Therapy”-Alison

Summary of “Color Psychology and Color Therapy”

In the chapter, “Emotional Reactions”, in page 137 to 150 of the book, “Color Psychology and Color Therapy” (1961), the author, Faber Birren, stated that because colour is too obvious to be ignored in our life, it gives people supernatural influence in psychological aspect such as in emotional reactions.

According to the book, F. Birren pointed out that different emotional responsiveness of people will result diverse reaction towards to colours in broad (1961, p.137). Extroverts are more likely warm colours, but introverts tend to prefer cool colours (Birren, 1961, p.138). The author (1961) then explained J.P. Guilford’s opinion about the cause and effect between colours and psychology: colours influence is not only reflected on one organ since light shining in the eyes, it also affects other organs (p.139). As well, Birren (1961) provided counterargument which disagrees that colours affect people because this thought may be from people who dislike certain colours, and so that there is the way they vent their arguments (p.140). However, he mentioned that colour does associate with emotion, and it is divided into two moods: warm colour such as red which offers people lively and exciting feelings, and cold colour such as blue, and violet which present inactive and calming feelings (Bireen, 1961, p.141). Further, he indicated in page 142 that because the relationship between subject himself, object, and outside world, it influences colour reaction, and there seems as no exact accurate results in emotional reaction of colour (Bireen, 1961). Yet, Bireen supplied a wide-ranging experiment about the reactions to colour which seem to be noted in the majority of people (1961, p.142). The experiment taken by hundreds of college students showed that bright colour (lights) makes muscular responses actively (Bireen, 1961, p.142-144). He then mentioned that under warm and cold colour light, the time, length, and weight of object would be looked and felt different (Bireen, 1961, p.146-147). Afterwards, Bireen (1961) said that other human sense such as hearing also associates with colour, eyes, and active (p.147-150).

In conclusion, F. Birren indicated that colour plays essential role in our life, and he mainly reported that colour affects emotional reactions by mentioning colour psychology, rumours from opponents, research in colour psychology, and other human senses related to colour reactions (1961, p.137-150).

Critique/ Opinion

The book was interesting to read because its content and structure are valuable to learn.

The author claimed his opinion in general that colour’s importance in our life and its effect in emotional reaction. Not only has he provided examples, phenomenon about colour reaction, explanation about other writers’ statements, citation and quotation from famous experts, and also his own inference, but also he gave counterarguments in page 140. The high quality and great numbers of supporting sentences have covered up the opposite gossip.

In addition, in the content of the article, it would be a boring theory if the author did not provides numerous examples and descriptions to modify the structure of the article. However, he did not use an interesting tone in order to attract the reader’s attention, the author indicated his own point of view in the introduction and supported his statement by the words “many researchers …” to convince the reader’s identification.

To sum up, because of the author’s strategies in using examples and other appropriate supporting sentences in the article, although he uses a serious tone, he brings a worthy-to-read article. Moreover, the quotation and counterarguments contribute readers with a different point of view about colour psychological aspect in emotional reactions. It is especially worthy to learn from the article in both the structure of his writing and the content about emotional reactions of colours.