The sun and how do we feel about the color yellow? Methodological concerns

摘要

Jonauskaite et al. (2019) in a recent study reported that people from different cultures associate colors such as yellow with emotions. Their study comprised participants from 55 countries. The aim was to investigate the association of yellow-joy feelings with varied geographical locations, climatic changes, distance to equator, daytime hours and sunshine. They found the likelihood of yellow-joy association varied from 5.7% in Egypt to 87.7% in Finland. They concluded that participants who live further away from the equator and in rainier countries are more likely to associate yellow with joy. While there is interest in the authors' findings, I thought we need to expose specific concerns about the methodological design and interpretation of findings. I summarize my comments about Jonauskaite and colleagues' paper under two key points.