458 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Investigations on students in various countries have almost invari- 

 ably shown that yellow is the least attractive color. In Germany, Cohn 

 found among students that yellow, even in any degree of saturation, was 

 never the preferred color. 6 In determining the color preferences of 

 100 students in Columbia University, it was found that yellow came, 

 at a considerable distance, fourth, being only followed by green, while 

 Wissler found that, for male and female students alike, yellow is of all 

 colors the least frequently preferred (by two per cent, of the men and 

 five per cent, of the women) ; among the men it was also the most fre- 

 quently disliked, though among the women this dislike was trans- 

 ferred to orange. 7 The dislike of female students to yellow, it will be 

 seen, seems a little less marked than that of male students. This is 

 confirmed by an inquiry at Wellesley College, where it was found that 

 though only 10 per cent, of the women preferred yellow, it was yet more 

 frequently preferred than green or violet. 8 At Cornell University, in a 

 series of careful experiments on a small number of individuals, Major 

 considered that there was no evidence of a positive dislike of yellow, 

 yet all his subjects found yellow or orange among the least pleasant 

 colors. 9 



Among adults generally, it must be said finally, that yellow and 

 orange are very seldom the favorite colors, and in ascertaining the 

 color preferences of 4,500 men and women at the Chicago Exposition, 

 Jastrow found that yellow and orange were the least preferred colors, 

 though here also women seemed to like yellow more often than men. 



But for mankind in general these results, undisputed as they prob- 

 ably are, do not hold universally good. There is one vast and highly 

 important area of the world, by no means uncivilized in large part, 

 where yellow, so far from being disparaged, is held in the highest honor. 

 Throughout nearly the whole of Asia, ancient and modern — in Assyria, 

 in India and in Ceylon, throughout China, in the Malay peninsula — 

 yellow is usually the supreme and most sacred color. 10 In India and 

 Ceylon yellow is preferred, whether in flowers or in garments, and the 

 substances that produce yellow dyes are held in highest honor and are 

 essential in the ritual of many ceremonies ; in the ceremonial of Hindu 

 marriage, for instance, turmeric is always necessary. Turmeric is in 

 India the substitute for the saffron, probably used by the Aryans be- 



• J. Cohn, Philosophische Studien, Vol. X., p. 562. 



T C. Wissler, ' The Correlation of Mental and Physical Tests,' Psychological 

 Review Monographs, Vol. III., No. 6, p. 17. 



8 C. Mills, ' Individual Psychology,' American Journal Psychology, 1895. 



* D. R. Major, ' Affective Tone of Sense-impressions,' American Journal 

 Psychology, October, 1895. 



J. Jastrow, ' The Popular Esthetics of Color,' Popular Science Monthly, 

 1897, p. 361. 



10 The geographical distribution of the love of yellow has been especially 

 investigated by Arnold Ewald, ' Die Farbenbewegung,' pp. 64 et seq. 



