Cores, emoções e cartazes de cinema: um estudo de respostas emocionais às cores utilizando o espaço afetivo.

Abstract

This study addresses the influence of colors on the elicitation of emotions, with the purpose of enabling a better understanding of the emotional dimension of colors in the creation of visual messages. In the context of this research, we tried to evaluate if the colors can change the emotional response to movie posters to the point of asso-ciating them with emotional dimensions opposed to those of their movie genres. The study was carried out in two phases. The first one, descriptive, was intended to iden-tify, through the quantitative characterization of colors, the most representative color patterns in sets of posters belonging to the genres of Horror and Romantic Comedy, whose predominant emotions are located in opposite quadrants in the Affective Space (RUSSELL, 1980). In the second phase, the chromatic patterns identified in the previous phase were applied to fictitious posters and verified their effects on the emotional responses in a group of 50 participants, through the Self-Assesment Mani-kin - SAM (BRADLEY; LANG, 1994). For the production of the fictional posters, im-ages from the International Affective Picture System - IAPS were used. The descrip-tive research performed in the first phase identified color patterns with opposite char-acteristics. The color pattern with common attributes to most of the analyzed posters of the Horror genre featured predominantly colors with low levels of saturation and brightness, while the color pattern with common attributes to most of the analyzed posters of the Romantic Comedy genre, featured colors with high and medium levels of saturation and brightness. The results of the experiment carried out in the second phase indicate that the influence of the colors was not enough to change the percep-tion of participants in the dimensions of the emotions perceived in the posters. How-ever, perceived differences in the dispersion of frequencies and between the means of responses suggest that the influence of colors on emotional responses may vary according to the emotional characteristics inherent to the image. It was possible, therefore, to conclude that colors can elicit different emotional responses, assuming different meanings, depending on how the relationships with other elements of the visual message are established.