The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

There were two obvious important associations between structural variables: associations
between intensity and colour for three groups, together with the association of painted
line and red/green for schizophrenia; and negative associations between painted and drawn
line.
Differences between groups - Intensity
The order of brightness was much the same as that of amount of colour: controls,
depressives, personality disorder, substance abusers and schizophrenics. We could
expect relations between hue and intensity because the first qualities are contained by the
latter, although not necessarily explicitly, but previous studies have found high
correlations for intensity with colour 316 . Figures 4a-e show associations in three groups
between intensity and different colours for each diagnostic group, confirming that
intensity was actually measuring brightness of colour. So colour analysis alone cannot
fully answer the question whether patients paint darker, or gloomier, pictures than
controls 317 .
Different colours in the paintings of patients and controls did vary systematically
and supported the combination of measurements of hue and chroma, rather than tone
316 Wadlington and McWhinnie (1973) op.cit., found correlation in hue and chroma and intensity of colour.
317
R. D'Andrade and M. Egan (1974) found that emotional associations with colour existed but were not
confined to hue but to the degree of saturation and brightness in normal populations, The colours of
emotion, American Ethnologist , Feb. 1(1):49-63. There are also indications, from preference studies, that
different psychiatric groups may see different colours as dark, such as depressives but not controls grouped
blue with dark colours in a study by M.J. Garvey and M. Luxenberg (1987), Comparison of color
preference in depressives and controls, Psychopathology , V.20:268-271.
291