THE EFFECTS OF HUE AND BRIGHTNESS ON THE SIZE PERCEPTION

It has long been noticed by artists, psychologists and other specialists on color that some colors make objects appear larger and some color smaller (Arnheim, 1954). However only a few experimental studies have been done on this problem. Warden and Flyn (1931) asked their subjects to rank according to apparent size eight rectangular cartons which were identical in physical size but different in color, but could not obtain consistent results, ranking order being different from one serial arrangement on the display-shelf to another. Gundlach and Macoubrey (1926) repeated the same experiment by means of two different methods, the method of rank order and the method of paired comparison, and showed that both methods gave highly correlated results, brighter carton appearing larger than the darker. Tamaike (1935) found that the hue and brightness of background also affected the apparant size of circular figure. Recently Ohshima and his collaborators (1952) reported that there were some interactioneffects between the hue of figure and background, and Bevan and Duke (1953) showed in their experiment in an outdoor field the existence of some effect of hue other than the above-mentioned effect of brightness of figure. The following experiments were planned to measure more systematically the effects of the hue and brightness of both figure and background on the apparent size, and to clarify the ambiguous tendencies found in the previous experiments.