Collins Memorial Library: Conn 375: The Art & Science of Color: Social Sciences

Getting Started: Subject Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion

DeLong, Marilyn Revell. "Color in Dress." Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Ed. Valerie Steele. Vol. 1. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005. 280-283. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Encyclopedia of Race & Racism

"Skin Color." Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Ed. John Hartwell Moore. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 38-42. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Encyclopedia of Human Development

Golden, C. (2007). Stroop color and word test. In N. J. Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of measurement and statistics (Vol. 3, pp. 973-973). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd.

The Stroop Color and Word Test developed from the observation by early experimental psychologists that the naming of color hues is always slower than the reading of color names in literate adults.

Subject Databases

Subject databases cover a specific discipline and provide the widest range of access to scholarly sources. They are used for in-depth research. Here are just a few examples of databases that you could use to search color from a social science perspective.

Psychology

PsycINFO The American Psychological Association's (APA) resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books and dissertations is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health.

Sociology

Sociological Abstracts Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.

Communication Studies & Education

Business & Economics

Business Source Premier Major source for business & finance research. Includes news, magazines, and scholarly articles as well as country, company, and industry profiles.

Books and More!

Search Primo, the library's gateway to books, articles, film, and more!

Suggested search terms:

Color Psychological Aspects

Human skin color Social aspects

Colors Social Aspects

Color in Advertising

The Key of Green by Bruce R. Smith
Call Number: Print Books (PR428.C633 S65 2009 )
ISBN: 9780226763781
Publication Date: 2008-12-15
The color green was curiously prominent and resonant in English culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among other things, green was the most common color of household goods, the recommended wall color against which to view paintings, the hue that was supposed to appear in alchemical processes at the moment base metal turned to gold, and the color most frequently associated with human passions of all sorts.
Color by Victoria Finlay
Call Number: Print Books (ND1488 .F56 2004 )
ISBN: 0812971426
Publication Date: 2003-12-30
Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors. For example: Cleopatra used saffron—a source of the color yellow—for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects.
Living Color The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color
Colour, Art and Empire by Natasha Eaton
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781780765198
Publication Date: 2013-12-18
Colour, Art and Empire explores the entanglements of visual culture, enchanted technologies, waste, revolution, resistance and otherness.
Pink and Blue by Jo B. Paoletti
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780253001177
Publication Date: 2012-02-06
"When did we start dressing girls in pink and boys in blue?" To uncover the answer, she looks at advertising, catalogs, dolls, baby books, mommy blogs and discussion forums, and other popular media to examine the surprising shifts in attitudes toward color as a mark of gender in American children's clothing.