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Jack comments on The Red Bias - Less Wrong
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Interesting. Have you seen any suggestion that these reactions to the color black are innate? Light and darkness as a metaphor for good and evil is a common enough trope that I could see culture alone generating some of these effects. Do you know if this effect remains in cultures where people have darker skin?
Though it's been changing due to western influence, white is the color of mourning in Chinese culture, and black is pretty much neutral, and even associated with Heaven (which of course is vastly different than the Christian concept).
There's evidence that these associations with the color black are common across cultures, including in Africa. Frank & Gilovich discuss this at the start of their paper, and here is one cross-cultural article that they cite which found that black is seen as bad, strong, and passive, white is good and weak, and red is strong, active, and affectively salient.
These associations could be learned through widespread experiences like night being more dangerous and objects becoming darker as they get dirty, rather than being innate. Those widespread experiences could also lead many cultures to develop tropes of darkness and light, which could strengthen the associations.