The Vibrancy of Color In Culture

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between latitude and the influence it can have on the presence of color within a culture. To generate data points that would accurately determine the presence of color within a culture the larger website known as Instagram was used to gather photos taken in cities located within the selected latitudes. Photos were selected based on their popularity (number of likes) within each city and were run through Adobe Photoshop to generate a histogram of the color distribution within each photo. The standard deviation of these generated histograms was used to determine the vibrancy of the color in the photos and thus associate it with the presence of color within the cultures at separate latitudes of the 46th, 23rd and 0th parallel. The results were run through a series of T-tests (?=.05) comparing each latitude’s values to the next, but no significant differences were. An additional, Kolmogorv-Smirnov test was run to determine if measuring the data points as ordinal rather than nominal created significant results. Calculations at the .05 significance found that higher latitudes had less vibrant colors in their photos. One possible explanation for this relationship is the fewer number of hours and lower intensity of the sunlight at higher latitudes, this might have a direct influence on the color preferences in each culture.