Color Preferences are not Universal : Supplementary Section

Color preference research has traditionally focused on summarising or explaining the color preferences of groups of people. Claims of universal patterns and trends in color preference have generally been based on group analyses, with little consideration of the individual. Initial investigation of this issue has revealed that, although patterns can be identified at the group level, individual differences in color preferences are also considerable (Palmer & Schloss, 2010). Therefore, even though an average pattern of color preference can be identified for a particular group (e.g., peak at blue, minima at yellow), this may in fact not be true of any one individual. The extent of individual difference in color preference could therefore present an additional challenge to the notion that color preferences are 'universal' or somehow 'biologically constrained'. In the current investigation, as for Palmer and Schloss (2010b), inspection of individual color preferences revealed a multitude of different patterns of color preference, even within a particular culture or gender. To illustrate this, figure S1 illustrates the color preferences of four British females, with the average pattern of preference for British females for comparison. As can be seen in the figure, the pattern of preference varies across females, and no one female has the same pattern of color preference as the group average.