The Implicit Association in English of the Semantic Categories BROWN and GREY with PLEASANT

The Implicit Association in English of the Semantic Categories BROWN and GREY with PLEASANT Jodi L. Sandford University of Perugia, jodi.sandford@unipg.it Which color word is associated more easily with PLEASANT for speakers of English, BROWN or GREY? Both colors are low in saturation, both colors are associated with feelings of boredom and depression, and at the same time both color words collocate with words in positive connotations. Brown was used to mean gloomy, now it is used mostly regarding skin, fur, hair, or feathers of that color, and to describe natural things like wood and earth, and also filth and excrement. The two idiomatic expressions using brown —to brown nose or to brown off— are negative. Brown, however, is used for foods like bread, coffee, and chocolate. It is used in cooking “until brown”, and as a verb “brown the bird”. Grey is typically used to mean dreary, gloomy, having an indistinct quality, neutral or dull, especially in character or opinion. Nonetheless, grey is also used with positive associations, such as pearl grey, silver grey, and shiny grey. It is used when speaking of people of middle age or above —grey power, also as a verb, e.g. “just beginning to grey” or in the computer expression “to grey out”. It may mean ancient; venerable. Grey too is used to describe the color of hair, fur, and feathers, or natural things like stone, metals, the sky, and the water. So it would seem that both colors may be considered positive. This paper presents the results of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) developed to ascertain which of the two colors is implicitly associated more with PLEASANT. The IAT is an experimental paradigm developed by Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) to study the strength of concept associations in memory, and to explore the unconscious default construals of thinking and feeling. Originally developed for use in the social sciences, this novel semantic application of the IAT is employed to understand the linguistic entrenchment of the categories taken into consideration. The paradigm establishes a double discrimination task that maps four categories onto two responses. The categories are divided into two target categories, in this case BROWN and GREY, and two attribute categories, in this case PLEASANT and UNPLEASANT. The IAT verifies speed and facility of categorizing the stimuli of each category to a same response key: e.g. BROWN and PLEASANT vs. GREY and UNPLEASANT, or the opposite. Each conceptual category includes eight items that are divided equally between positive and negative connotations. The IAT was administered to 31 volunteers, who were native speakers of English, mean age 27. The results show an implicit preference for BROWN compared to GREY, confirming the initial hypothesis according to which BROWN is perceived more positively than GREY. The D measure score revealed a moderate associative strength between the categories of BROWN and PLEASANT. Greenwald, Anthony G., Debbie McGhee, and Jordan Schwartz. 1998. “Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74: 1464–1480.