Abstract: Colors are everywhere in our daily life, which will affect an individual’s emotional understanding of other emotional expressions and further influence the interpersonal communication. Thus, it is very important for examining the effect of color as emotional cue on emotional recognition. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect of background colors on emotional recognition of facial expression, and further explore the characteristics of time course in this effect. In the present study, we conducted 2（background colors: cool/ warm）×3（presentation times：100/500/1250 ms）mixed experimental design to examine the recognitions on the type and degree of happiness of neutral faces made by 110 participants of college students, with the background color and the showing time of face pictures as independent variables. In the experiment, the black fixation was presented firstly the screen, the time of presentation is 1000ms. Then, the background color and the neutral face were presented on the screen simultaneously, the time of presentation consists of three levels: 100ms, 500ms, and 1250ms, which were presented to the participants randomly. After that, the participants were required to recognition the emotion of neutral face made by the alternative way. If the participants recognized the neutral face as happy, they were asked to press “F” with the left index finger. If the participants recognized the neutral face as unpleasant, they should press the “J” with the right index finger. When the press was completed, participants were required to report their emotional experience to neutral faces on a Likert 5-point scale (1 represent extremely unpleasant and 5 represent extremely pleasant), higher scores indicate a higher level of pleasure. In order to counter balance the interference between background colors, the interval among trials is between 800ms and 1500ms, during which were presented blank screen. The whole experiment consists of 24 trials, the picture of neutral face was only presented on the cool and ward color once, respectively. Each block includes 12 trials. The sex of neutral face, the press of face recognition, the background color presented, which all were presented by the way of counter-balance. The present results showed that: (1) When the background color was orange, the percentage of happy and evaluate score tended to be higher compared with blue, when judge the expression of neutral face; (2) There are not significant difference in different showing time; (3) The interaction of color and time was also not significant. The findings indicate that the perception of background color affect emotion recognition of neutral face, and this effect is stable in different time course. Accordingly, the present conclusions are as follows: (1) background color have an effect on the emotional recognition of neutral face, individuals are more likely to recognize neutral emotion as happiness under the warm color condition than in the cool color; (2) The effect of background color on the emotional recognition of neutral face shows cross-time consistency. These conclusions have extended the empirical researches of color as emotional cue. Furthermore, the conclusions show clear practical implications for the effect of color on interpersonal relationships.

Key words: background color, facial expressions recognition, emotion, metaphor

摘要： 为考察背景颜色对中性面孔情绪识别的影响，探究该效应的时间特征，研究采用混合实验设计，以背景颜色为组内变量，包含以蓝色为代表的冷色调和以橙色为代表的暖色调两个水平；以呈现时间为组间变量，有100ms、500ms和1250ms三个水平，要求被试报告中性面孔图片的愉快体验以及程度。结果发现：（1）背景颜色的主效应显著，相较于以蓝色为代表色的冷色调背景，在以橙色为代表的暖色调背景下，被试对中性面孔图片愉快感知的百分比更高，愉快程度的评定分数也更高。（2）颜色和时间的交互作用不存在显著差异。这表明，背景颜色会影响个体对中性面孔图片的情绪识别，而且这种效应在不同时间进程下均存在。这一研究拓展了冷暖颜色作为情绪线索的实证研究，并对发挥颜色在人际关系方面的作用具有指导意义。

关键词: 背景颜色, 面孔识别, 情绪, 隐喻