This post suggests the title as a revealing question during interviews and selecting new candidates. The same concept may extend to choosing friends.
My story first
I was still a fresh PhD graduate. Some friends arranged for a dinner party so that I get to know more people. It turned out that, they had the intention that I meet with a young student who was studying for her bachelor’s degree in a neighboring country. She was due to return to her university in three days.
To cut the story short somehow I was engaged to her. This is another story of how and why it happened so quickly. As I accompanied her to the airport, she mentioned that one color she hated was yellow. She repeated this a few times when I realized my tie had a yellowish color.
Purely by chance two weeks later her university invited me to give a lecture and be their guest for a few days. I accepted.
I meant to wear a yellowish shirt. My fiancé became furious. She said things that I could not accept. That day I broke the engagement.
The French people have an adage, which means do not discuss taste or color. These are personal things.
Yellow is the essence of joy, happiness, cheerfulness, optimism—you name it. Using it modestly is a good sign of keeping fresh. That my ex-fiancé acted the way she did revealed to me that she was not a compromiser. Therefore, I decided to end my story with her.
This is how the idea of this post spurred in my mind. Can we tell from the title question something about people such as friends and interviewees?
Share some of my thoughts hoping for more from the readers.
What color do you choose for your wall?
If we ask people such as interviewees what color, would you paint the walls in your office can we have an idea about their behavior and psychology?
One person may choose red because this is a color, which symbolizes affection and love. It is also a sign of a tendency to draw attention.
It is interesting what I experienced in a hospital that I did for a consulting job. The walls were painted in red. It turned out that patients coming from some Asian countries considered red as the color of death and avoided visiting that hospital. The management repainted the walls to a blue color that was acceptable almost by all. The blue color reflects trust and dependability.
Orange is the color that combines the energy of the red and the warmth of the yellow. Candidates who select this color for their walls seem to have both energy and friendliness to others.
Green is the color of growth and is a sign of balancing logical and emotional thinking. Maybe you need candidates who like green color.
Spiritual people choose the purple color. People who select black colors moderately show seriousness and elegance, but too much of it may call for worries about being devoid of any color and dim.
Do you find this interview question agreeable? How much color is trustful for telling what kind of people we deal with at work and other places?
Personality characteristics and colors have a strong relationship. In reality there is a very strong link between the choice of our favorite color and our personality.
It seems that in each of us there is “something” innate that determines this idiosyncratic bond with colors. The psychology of color highlights that, in general, warm colors are associated with an extroverted, cheerful, sociable character, confident in one’s abilities. On the contrary, those with a cold tone are more appreciated by introverted people who tend to be sad and shy. Artists, designers and advertisers use colors as a communication tool to influence people’s moods, feelings and emotions.
However, trying to reduce the relationship between colors and personality to a list of common rules and observations valid for everyone can be a very difficult undertaking because we should also consider that the same color has different shades, some colder, others warmer, which can inspire different emotional reactions in the same person, even if they are the same color, and furthermore, sometimes there is a dissociation between values and preferences. A person may choose a certain color in one context, while he may prefer another in another situation.
I would avoid this question during an interview, unless it is functional to the role to be filled.