After getting more than 80 responses to my grapheme-color synesthesia survey, I discovered some very interesting trends in the synesthetic colors of numbers.
You can download the raw data in an Excel spreadsheet format here.
But first, here’s some background information I also gathered:
- 70% of synesthetes are female
- 86% associate (see colors in their head) rather than project (see colors in their vision)
- At least 78% have types of synesthesia other than grapheme-color
There were 16 color options for the numbers. Here are my pie charts (made in Excel) of what colors synesthetes associate with numbers:
I found it very interesting how some numbers were overwhelmingly associated with one or two colors, while in others the colors seemed to be evenly distributed.
Here are my thoughts.
1: It’s fascinating how 1 is predominantly white, black, red, and yellow. Is it a coincidence that these colors are said to be the first ones that enter human language?
Figure 1: Berlin and Kay’s (1969) Paradigm for the Order in which Colors are Learned
white\ /green \ | purple >-->red--> >-->blue-->brown-->| pink black/ \yellow/ | orange | gray
“If a language has only two colors—and all languages have at least two—they are always white and black; if a language has three colors, the one added is red; if a fourth is added, it will be either green or yellow…” (Brown 1991: 13-14).
Perhaps these colors are often associated with the number 1 because it’s the first number conceived by humans. It certainly strikes me as more than just random.
2: Also has strong leanings towards yellow and blue—the colors “learned” after the ones present for 1. Lots of red/pink too.
3: More than half of the pie chart is dedicated to yellow and green. How interesting.
4: A lot of blue and red.
5: Seemingly all over the place, but it seems to be mostly primary colors.
6: Again evenly distributed, but there’s a lot of blue, purple, pink.
7: Very similar to 3—lots of yellow and green.
8: An overwhelming amount of purple, with a lot of blue as well.
9: Seems to be evenly distributed, but interestingly has the highest percentage of black other than 0 and 1.
0: More than half is white, with a lot of grey and black as well. Doesn’t seem surprising to me—0 is essentially nothingness, which is very often represented by black or white.