White represents goodness, purity, cleanliness, while black is used to describe nothingness, absence, or even evil.
After dark times, we want to believe that bright days await us. We avoid being blacklisted in our jobs. Black-capped hackers are described as evil hackers, while white-capped hackers choose to use their power for good rather than evil. While white lies are considered acceptable, we don't want a black mark on our record. In picture books, good people, angels, and Gods wear white; villains, demons, and Reapers wear black.
There are, of course, exceptions to these metaphors. For example, in financial statements, we prefer to be “red” instead of “black”. This is because red represents a business with negative earnings, and black represents a business with positive earnings. But his mostly black-and-white depictions, despite such exceptions, are remarkably consistent.
So, how do such linguistic metaphors form?
The Need To Make Sense Of A Complex World
According to a theory put forward by cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, metaphors are a cognitive tool that allows people to understand things they cannot see, taste, hear, smell or touch. They help people understand difficult or abstract concepts, through simpler, more concrete paradigms.
Metaphors take shape as people gain experience in the physical world. For example, the concept of power is linked to the concept of height, because in our childhood we see adults taller, hence stronger. Even when we are adults, we continue to indirectly associate height with strength. Moreover, this prediction will not only consist of tall buildings or tall people. In multiple studies, researchers found that symbols representing people or groups appear stronger to people if they appear in a higher position on a page than other symbols.
Loading Meaning Into Colors
Similar to the metaphors we just mentioned, fresh snow and clean water are white or transparent, while stained water first turns brown and then black. It is also bright and relatively safe during the day, but dark and more dangerous at night. As we observe all this in our daily lives, we begin to create conceptual metaphors or subconscious connections between color and goodness.
Many studies conducted today also reveal the existence of this relationship.
In one paper, for example, psychologists Brian Meier, Michael Robinson, and Gerald Clore have shown that White is indirectly associated with morality, and black is associated with immorality.
In another study, participants were asked to rate words positively or negatively. The words were displayed in black or white font on a computer screen with a program that measured the speed of classification. Participants rated words with relatively positive meanings, such as” active, “” baby, “” clean “and” kiss, " more quickly when they were shown white instead of black. On the other hand, they classified words with negative meaning, such as “Crooked,” “diseased,” “stupid” and “ugly,” more quickly when they were written in black.
Race Factor
Can something as simple as a color-favor relationship trigger racial bias? The answer to that question, unfortunately, is yes.
Called” Implicit Association Tests", it is used in social psychology to find and measure the associations that lie in a person's subconscious. One of these tests is a test that measures racial bias. These tests look for a link between the faces of black and white people and kindness. Although implicit connotation tests can detect biases towards Blacks, apart from skin color, any animosity that may have been previously harbored, or other differences in appearance, from hair to facial structure, are also effective in selection. Still, the relationship between skin color and well-being is clearly considered a factor in racial bias.
So, can these conceptual metaphors, already entrenched in our daily conversations, be turned upside down? What if "angels" and heroes start dressing in black and villains in white? Or if Darth Vader suddenly becomes a kind-hearted hero of the dark side? Of course, metaphors are not rigid and invariant. It is possible to consciously change this perception with the things we write, draw, talk about. Over time, perhaps this shift could gradually erode some of our implicit biases.