Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Color Psychology

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Have you ever cried way longer than usual when you were in a yellow room? You’ve been smacked by color psychology my friend and it’s got your number.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people? Because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandy B, unpacked black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more.

Listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Bowen-Yen. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys' Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan-Cortina

2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Brian, hi, how Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt, hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway,

and we are in Italy to give you experience. from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here. And I just realized that I opened this like a regular episode.

But it's not because Jerry's not really here. She's here for Dave, who's possessed Jerry, which makes this a short stuff. That's right. And we were talking about color psychology. today you put this one together and I think it's a pretty good one because you know it seems sort of obvious to say that people have reactions to color and it is but there's there's a lot more that goes into it beyond just like seeing a color and having a feeling like where you were raised

what kind of culture you were raised in maybe how old you are maybe how you're feeling at the time specific experiences with that kind of color and there's a field that studies this called color psychology. Yeah. So it's an interesting field in that it's very quickly figured out there's no universality to color psychology because of all of those factors that you just mentioned. It's a very personal response, but the fact that people do have emotional and psychological responses to color, which means that it's just totally symbolic to them, that.

that is worth investigating and diving into. And then also there are some broad strokes, especially when you're talking about a large culture, a bunch of societies that form an even bigger culture, that you can manipulate to sell things to those people if you want to using color as a market or advertiser. Yeah, I mean, a lot of thought, like beyond just your own home or whatever,

how you want to paint your room, which, by the way, we're going to color-drench our bedroom soon. Have you heard of this? No. Color drenching is when you paint everything in there. Oh, neat. The same color, like ceiling, trim, doors, everything. What about, in lamps and stuff, too, or just the stuff that's fastened down?

No, no, no, just like wall ceiling, trim, doors, everything you would normally paint. You paint it all one color, and it sounds oppressive, but it's really kind of awesome, and it seems like a trend. That sounds really cool. Are you doing it in a mat? It seems like a mat would be best for something like that. Yeah, probably Matt, maybe semi-gloss, but it'll be, I think it'll really cozy up our bedroom, which we're looking to do. That's cool, man. Do you know what color you're going to get? Probably like a deep green, something kind of dark.

Okay. I used to have, back in the 90s, back when Burgundy and dark blue and Hunter Green were all in fashion, I put them all together in my bedroom and it looked knockout. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll let you know how it goes. Okay. I'll just nudge you in bed and say, what do you think? Perfect. All right. So we were talking about the obvious thing, like just painting your room or something. But, you know, a lot of thought goes into color design for logos and like the lobby of the big corporation or what kind of color the nurse's uniform should be or the kids' hospital room should be.

Like, that's all color psychology. For sure. There's also color symbolism, too, where your culture basically. says, hey, we believe wearing black is a sign of mourning. Like, if you're in morning, wear black. If you go to another culture, typically in the east, they'll say, no, you wear white when you're in mourning, right? So there's not an inherent meaning or symbolism in colors. It's all what one culture decides that color means. Like, another good example is associating luck with green. And you can actually trace that back to Ireland being considered the Emerald

aisle and leprechauns being associated with luck. So through a bunch of cultural convolutions, the West associates green with good luck, right? That you would not find that in other cultures, right? So there is like a real culturally bound aspect to it. But like you said before, it gets even more gradiated to where if you were chased by a bear in the woods as a kid, you're probably not going to like the color green very much. Or you're not going to like brown. because that reminds you the color of the grizzly bear, whereas somebody else would be like, I was raised on a farm and everything was brown,

and I loved it, so I love the color of brown. It gets like that detailed and that granular. The upshot of the whole thing is that colors can affect us, and that in and of itself, you just, it's so, we just know that, but if you step back and actually think about what's going on, it's actually kind of mind-blowing, especially in the ways it affects us. Yeah, for sure. They have done cross-cultural studies about, you know, how it is around the world.

They found that American and Japanese, their concepts of warm and cold colors are about the same. But in Japan, blue and green are perceived as good, and red, purple, orange are perceived as bad, where in the United States, red, yellow, green is considered good, and orange and red and purple bad. Yeah, and one thing I wanted to mention about the morning colors is we have an African-American church right around the block from us, and they have had their fair share of funerals over the years. And a lot of these I've seen everybody wearing purple, and I've wondered if that was a thing in the black community or if it was just something particular to the person, like that was their favorite color.

I don't know, but I do know that purple and gold and white and black are all, depending on the culture, appropriate morning wear. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, I hope someone could write in and tell me, because I never feel. like I can just walk up to the gathering and say like, hey, was this person into purple or what's the deal? Yeah. Not the right time. I'm sorry for your loss, but I just have to ask you.

Yeah. You want to take a break and come back and talk about the Crayola eight pack of colors? Let's do it. I'm Bowen-Yin. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games,

we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bob, hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt, hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy

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Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Josh promised now that we're back to talk about the Crayola 8, but as we do on stuff you should know, we're not going to talk about all 8. we're just going to hit some highlights of those main colors and kind of talk a little bit about what most people feel. I'll go ahead and start with red. I think we should talk about red because that's the color that kind of has the strongest reaction usually out of people

because red is just a very big, bold, brave choice in a lot of cases. They say if you have a red car, you're going to get pulled over more often by cops. They report feelings of strength when you wear red or courage or aggression. It can actually, increase your heart rate and energy level. And obviously red is why, you know, you paint stop signs red.

It's because it's a real eye grabber or a warning label is red because it'll catch your eye. Right. And another one, it depends on the shade or I guess the saturation or value. Ooh. But I like orange sometimes. Apparently a lot of people can't stand orange. And I get that because there are colors that.

I can't stand. Like what? I really don't like magenta. What's magenta? Is that like a purple? Yeah, it's like a reddish purple. Like red-ish purple. What's your favorite color?

Blue, often like a robin's egg blue, but also I like royal blues kind of nice. Dark blue. The bluer blues rather than the darker blues I usually kind of lean toward. But yeah. I also like pastels. Oh, yeah, sure. You've got a nice stable of like pastel sweatshirts and things. I do. I tend to depend on the season. I really, you know, kind of obviously love like burnt oranges and browns and sort of forest greens in the fall and winter.

And I brighten up a bit, but I definitely love greens and browns and hues of orange the most, I think. I see. Yeah. But which one are you talking about? Yellow? No, orange. Well, we just kind of finished orange. I mean, it's just all over the place. I think there's just so many different weird associations. This list says flamboyance, energy, comfort, warmth.

I mean, you can't really put four different things that are less associated with one another together. Yeah, for sure. I do like black. I like wearing black things. I always have black is beautiful. Black is powerful. Authoritativeness comes to mind, obviously, like strength. it can be overwhelming for a lot of people.

Like usually painting walls black is, I mean, that's a big choice. I've got a couple of black walls in my house, like my office. I have one wall that's black. Yeah, yeah. So like, but there are many shades within the black, like when you go to pick out paint colors,

black is not just black. And obviously, you know, in like westerns, the black hat symbolized good. The white hat symbolized like the, you know, the bad guy and the good guy. And in hacking too. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's true.

Like there's black hat hackers and white hat hackers. Yeah. We have to at least talk about yellow. Yeah, let's do it. This to me is like, I think it's the most all over color. Because people like yellow, but it's associated with so many different things. Like we call people who are cowards, they're called yellow, especially if you're an old-timey person. There's also like this idea that you might cry longer in a yellow room, which I cannot find.

anything to actually back that up. It's almost just become legendary. But I guarantee there's some study that said that at some point. But it's also considered very cheerful, right? I mean, yellow is like the color of the smiley face and the sun. And it's just, it depends on, again, not just like your experiences with yellow or what your culture says yellow is, but your mood that day. Even more important, though, is there's not just one yellow.

Like you talked about how there's all these different shades of black. Yeah. All the colors have different saturations, just how colorful they are. Their value, the brightness, the hues, or the actual different colors. Like all of these things, like a pale cream pastel yellow is going to make you feel differently than a neon yellow is. The neon yellow is going to make you run out and buy a mountain dew. The pastel creamy yellow is going to make you want to sit down and have deep. Yeah, agreed. I mean, I think the rest of these people can go do more color research if they're planning their wardrobe or they're painting their house or something.

Yes. My advice is to, you know, you've got to get those small little tester sizes and just throw a little on the wall and see what you think. And then look at it in a bunch of different light, regular daylight. Because that really can change the hue of a color is what kind of light you're using. Flashlight. Your power may go out at some point. You want to make sure. It looks good in that too. Yeah, for sure. You got anything else then? I got nothing else. All right, everybody. Short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio.

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