We give strong unconscious reactions to different colours, therefore - knowingly or unknowingly - we are bombarded by "colour-coded" stimuli many times a day. I have a passion for colours since my very early teenage years. I even aspired to be an artist for a while, but then I finally chose psychology and for several years after graduation I was involved in a research dealing with the symbolism of colours. In this series, I would like to share this passion with you by having a closer look at the meaning of one colour at a time.

After exploring the meaning of red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and brown, we continue our journey with probably the most contradictory colour, pink, which is a mixture of red and white and - depending on the quantity of these colours, the resulting pink shade - may carry quite ambivalent meanings.

Pink is innocent

In it's most obvious meaning pink is often linked to childhood, sweetness and innocence, as well as the entire world of baby girls. Therefore products aimed at girls often display pink on their packaging and on the products themselves. Also fairies are often depicted as wearing pink in fiction.

Pink makes us crave sugar, so it is often used by shops selling ice-cream or other sweets. For example one of the famous sweets shops in Hungary, called the Sugar Shop, uses multiple shades of pink predominantly in their very colourful inner design.

Pink is feminine

In Europe and in America, pink is mainly a female color. Many products targeted to women and girls use pink to stress this association. However, this strong distinction wasn't always the case and is not universal at all. For example in Japan, pink is associated with masculine traits.

At the beginning of the 19th century in England boys were considered as small men, and while men wore red clothes, boys wore pink. However stores found that people were choosing to buy pink for girls, and blue for boys increasingly, so soon it became a new norm. Nowadays in Europe and in the United States, pink is associated with girls, while blue with boys.

In 1953 when Mamie Eisenhower wore a pink dress as her inaugural gown is thought to have been a key turning point to the association of pink as a color that "ladylike" women wear.

Pink is gentle

Pink represents the passion and power of red softened with the purity, openness and completeness of white. This is the colour of tenderness, caring, romantic love and also familiar love.

Pink relates to compassion, warmth and hope, so many charity organizations choose it as a major component of their marketing program. A typical example is the breast cancer campaign, where this caring and hopeful side of pink is combined with the strong feminine associations it carries.

Pink is calming

Pink calms us down by alleviating feelings of anger, aggression, abandonment and neglect.

Studies have confirmed that exposure to large amounts of pink can create a feeling of physical weakness in people. Violent and aggressive prisoners have been successfully calmed by placing them in a pink room for a specified amount of time, but exposure for too long had the opposite effect.

For the very same reason, sport's teams sometimes use pink to paint the locker room of opposing teams. The Iowa Hawkeyes for example have a pink visiting team locker room at their Kinnick Stadium. The idea came from Iowa coach Hayden Fry, who had majored in psychology and believed that the pink room would mess with the minds of the opposing teams.

Pink is optimistic

Pink is a positive color that conveys the feeling that everything will go well. By promoting excessive optimism, it can even be associated with not seeing clearly or not perceiving the negative aspects of reality. (Most people have heard the sayings "everything is rosy" or "seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses", these refer to this aspect of pink.)

What does pink tell about you…

If you choose pink as your favourite colour, then you are probably very much in touch with your femininity - you are romantic, sensual and sensitive. (This includes caring and romantic men, who can be somewhat feminine, too. On the other hand, nowadays it's considered to be fashionable and modern to wear pink by men. It could also suggest that he pays attention to trends and fashion.)

If you prefer light shades of pink, then you are calm and naively sweet, which may give the overall impression of reserved shyness. (With darker, more vibrant shades, this childish-side of pink is replaced by extravagance and seduction.)
You probably have a youthful appearance, looking younger than you really are. You have an optimistic and positive outlook on life, you try see the good in everyone.

A strong preference for pink (after adolescence) may indicate a need for acceptance, support and unconditional love. In many cases women's attraction to "baby pink" may speak of a desire for the more carefree days of childhood from their overworked and overburdened daily life.

Pink in different cultures

• The golden age of light shades of pink was the Rococo Period in the 18th century, when it was particularly championed by Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV of France. She had a special shade pink made for her by the Sevres porcelain factory.
• In the 20th century, pinks became brighter, and more vivid, partly because of the invention of chemical dyes which did not fade. The pioneer in the creation of this new wave of pinks was the Italian designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, who created the so-called "shocking pink" by mixing magenta with a small amount of white.
• In Nazi Germany, homosexual inmates of concentration camps were forced to wear a pink triangle. That is why this pink triangle has become a symbol of the modern gay rights movement.
• In Japan, pink is most commonly associated with springtime due to the blooming cherry blossoms.
• In Spanish and Italian, a "pink novel" is a sentimental novel marketed to women.
• In Catholicism, rose pink symbolizes joy and happiness. It is used for the Third Sunday of Advent, therefore one of the candles in an Advent wreath may be pink, rather than purple.
• The Chinese had not recognized the colour pink until they had contact with Western culture, so the Chinese word for pink translates as "foreign colour."
• Jaipur City is called "The Pink City", because of its giant forts, palaces and its distinguished pink colour.
• Marrakesh is sometimes referred to as the "Rose City" because of its salmon-pink coloured buildings and the red clay of its terrain.

Interesting facts about pink

• According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink was the favourite colour of only two-percent of respondents (although it did not have any strong negative associations, few respondents chose it as their favourite colour).
• Probably the most famous piece of art, or rather an "environmental work of art" is Surrounded Islands by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The couple wrapped wooded islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6,500,000 sq ft of bright pink fabric.
• The pink or reddish colour of flamingos comes from carotenoid proteins in their diet of animal and plant plankton. An unhealthy or malnourished flamingo is usually pale or white.
• Pink noise in audio engineering is a signal with a special frequency spectrum (where the power spectral density is proportional to the reciprocal of the frequency). It is used for example for calibrating audio equipments.
• Traditional rosé wines and champagnes get their pink colour when they are fermented with dark purple grapeskins for a short time.
• The London Financial Times newspaper uses a distinctive salmon pink colour for its newsprint, originally because this paper was less expensive than bleached white paper. Later the colour was used to distinguish the newspaper from competitors.

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If you are interested, here you can read the previous parts in this series:

Introduction
Fiery Red
Cool Blue
Golden Yellow
Forest Green
Vivid Orange
Royal Purple
Chocolate Brown
Mesmerizing Turquoise
Ordinary Grey

Literature used

• David Piper: Understanding Art - Appreciation, Method and Technique (1981)
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Theory of Colours (Illustrated Edition), Echo Library (2016)
• Eva Heller, Psychologie de la couleur; effets et symboliques. Editions Pyramid (2009)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink
• https://www.colorpsychology.org/pink/
• http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-pink.html
• http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-pink.html
• http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/pink-in-business.html
• http://colorpsychologymeaning.com/color-pink/
• https://www.verywell.com/the-color-psychology-of-pink-2795819
• http://www.sensationalcolor.com/color-meaning/color-meaning-symbolism-psychology/all-about-the-color-pink-4342#.Wm32ZyOZMdU
• https://www.fatrabbitcreative.com/blog/psychology-of-the-color-pink-and-what-it-means-for-your-business
• https://www.color-meanings.com/pink-color-meaning-the-color-pink/
• https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/pink-noise-versus-white-noise/

Sources of pictures

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