Analysis of affective factors of colored three-dimensional shapes

“Shape” has been regarded as one of the fundamental elements of plastic art, together with “color” and “material.” The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of shape on affective meanings, when the visual stimulus is a three‐dimensional shape. The semantic differential technique is used for the extraction of affective factors, with samples of stimuli produced by three‐dimensional computer graphics (3DCG). Since it is difficult to separate the stimuli of shape and color in the visual stimulus of a three‐dimensional shape, both single‐color experiments and colored three‐dimensional‐shape experiments were performed; the influence of shape is investigated by comparison of the respective results. A total of 33 single colors and 132 colored three‐dimensional shapes with simple geometrical form (cube, cylinder, cone, and sphere) were used as samples. Four factors are extracted for single‐color stimuli by factor analysis: “showiness,” “pleasantness,” “strength,” and “warmth.” The factor of “looseness” is also added to the above factors in the case of a three‐dimensional‐shape stimulus. The following tendencies of these factors are obtained: among the single‐color factors, the factors of “pleasantness” and “warmth” show marked variation caused by the influence of shape, and the factor score of “looseness” depends on the straightness or roundness of the shape. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 92(5): 41–54, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10001