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Hue Heat
Experiments show we recognize imperceivable dualities and opposites, such as blue versus hot and red versus cold. We identify more closely with a hot blue object than a hot red one and a cold red object more than a cold blue one.
The hue heat hypothesis demonstrates how we consider certain qualities to be opposites even though we shouldn’t think of them as opposites based on experience, and how it can influence our behavior (Bellia et al. 2019):
“The Hue Heat Hypothesis (HHH) is based on the idea that light and colours of the environment can affect thermal perception and influence thermal comfort. Specifically, it states that, when spectral power distribution of light reaching an observer’s eye is characterized by long wavelengths in the visible spectrum, the space is perceived as warmer; conversely, when small wavelengths are predominant, the space is perceived as cooler.”
Experiments show people will hold a hot blue vessel longer than a hot red one and a cold red vessel longer than a cold blue one (Ziat et al. 2016). Blue coloration perceptually counteracts or moderates heat, and red counteracts coldness, meaning hot and blue are opposites in the mind, or psychological opposites, as predicted based on semantic and other evidence in More and Less Exciting Things and Categories of the Mind. We know hot and dark and cold and bright to be dualistic opposites even though we wouldn’t learn this from normal experience. In our experience, it’s not true in any absolute sense that blue and hot or red and cold are opposites. It’s only true in the mind and the substance of the brain.
It might be argued based on hue heat experiments that a bright hot object is generally more exciting than a hot dark or cold bright object, which themselves are more exciting than a cold dark one. Hot dark and cold bright objects, the ones we hold longer on average, at least in a simple, contact time or latency-based sense, are more likable or familiar than cold dark or hot bright ones.
The results of hue heat experiments reflect sensory biases favoring the mixtures hot — dark and bright — cold over the perceptual combinations hot — bright and cold — dark. Adding blue to heat or heat to…
