A few years ago I wrote an article for Sea Kayaker Magazine about the psychology of color and how it relates to the color we choose for a kayak... especially the deck. I was interested because after I finished circumnavigating Iceland in a kayak with a yellow deck, I borrowed my then girlfriend's kayak which was identical but for the color (green deck) and felt very insecure on what was a choppy sea but certainly nothing I would normally worry about. I began asking other paddlers what color they preferred and why... and came up with some interesting results, enough to make some generalizations. Then recently I heard Mike from Portland Kayak Company saying he didn't like paddling the "green boat" and it reminded me of my earlier experience... and apparently his feeling about it had been similar to mine at the time.... has anyone else out there had a "color" experience???
So yellow is a "big" color, an "adventurous" color, where red, the color of flight, fright and fight is a more aggressive color. The color red makes not just humans but other animals ready for flight/fight by raising blood pressure and heart rate... dark blue having the opposite effect.
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