Person Colors

Synesthete DR experiences a rare form of synesthesia in which the sight of people simultaneously elicits imaginary colors located in space in front of her. We evaluated her convictions that these synesthetic ‘people colors’ are both stable and associated with their personality traits, as with synesthete S (Collins, 1929, Journal of General Psychology, 2:1, 12-27.) DR’s people colors were elicited by previously unknown undergraduates, who each rated themselves on the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). In Study 1, DR briefly viewed each of 10 subjects in silence through a half-silvered mirror, for two sessions. In Study 2, DR could both see and talk briefly to each of 12 new subjects, for three sessions. Each time DR both detailed her synesthetic colors and filled out her TIPI ratings of each subject. Ratings and colors were reliable across sessions. Her colors were captured as color washes by an artist, to DR’s satisfaction. We rated the two most prominent colors in each wash on the yellow-blue and red-green axes. The correlation of DR’s yellow-blue color with the subjects’ Extraversion, as coded from the TIPI self-reports, rose from r=0.53 in Study 1 to r=0.74 in Study 2. All other relations were weak (-0.2<r<0.30). We conclude that DR’s person colors, though uninformative in general, are stably and non-accidentally related to extraversion.