title: Cross-cultural color-odor associations.
abstract: Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries to the color pink or red. These associations are forms of crossmodal correspondences. Recently, there has been discussion about the extent to which these correspondences arise for structural reasons (i.e., an inherent mapping between color and odor), statistical reasons (i.e., covariance in experience), and/or semantically-mediated reasons (i.e., stemming from language). The present study probed this question by testing color-odor correspondences in 6 different cultural groups (Dutch, Netherlands-residing-Chinese, German, Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, and US residents), using the same set of 14 odors and asking participants to make congruent and incongruent color choices for each odor. We found consistent patterns in color choices for each odor within each culture, showing that participants were making non-random color-odor matches. We used representational dissimilarity analysis to probe for variations in the patterns of color-odor associations across cultures; we found that US and German participants had the most similar patterns of associations, followed by German and Malay participants. The largest group differences were between Malay and Netherlands-resident Chinese participants and between Dutch and Malaysian-Chinese participants. We conclude that culture plays a role in color-odor crossmodal associations, which likely arise, at least in part, through experience.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Carmel A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Levitan
authors.affiliation: Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jiana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Xperiment, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Andy T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Woods
authors.affiliation: Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Boesveldt
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Jason S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Kirsten J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: McKenzie
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dodson
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jai A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Levin
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Christine X R
authors.initials: CX
authors.lastname: Leong
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jasper J F
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: van den Bosch
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D003116:Color; D003118:Color Perception; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008296:Malaysia; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D009812:Odorants; D055696:Olfactory Perception; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult