Childhood is a time of self-discovery where we make distinctions between ourselves and the world. We often test our limitations and attempt to establish new boundaries for ourselves. We become aware of the power of choice.

What do our choices reveal about us? It’s not an easy question to answer because we don’t all operate on a level playing field. People who live in countries with fewer natural resources, harsh climates, rigid social constructs, or authoritarian governments have limited opportunities and limited choices about how to live their loves.

If one hundred people randomly chosen from around the world were each given the equivalent of $1,000.00 U.S. dollars they would all spend it differently. Some might buy food, medicine, or pay bills. Others might save it, buy luxury items, or donate part or all of it to charity. These choices can reveal a lot about our upbringing, our socioeconomic status, or our relationship with money.

Traditionally, our religious beliefs, career prospects, level of education, and social status were determined by the family we happened to be born into or the people who raised us. If our father was a serf, we were serfs, and we married a serf. The same applied to the nobility.  We stayed in our communities and lived lives similar to our parents.

Explorers like Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci, Vasco da Gama, Leif Erickson, Sir Francis Drake, and Captain John Cook (plus many others) showed us there was a big world out there. They brought us wonders from around the world and inspired generations to set sail for new lives and new opportunities.

Merchants who traded and sold local and imported commodities operated in ancient Babylon, Assyria, China, Egypt, Greece, Persia, Phoenicia, India, and Rome. They offered people choices for a price. A wealthy and powerful merchant class emerged during the European medieval period. Prosperity brought more choices.

Many young men chose to settle in distant lands in order to make their fortunes and live different lives. Sometimes, they relocated their families. Ironically, they often chose to recreate the same social structure they originally sought to escape because this time they were in a more advantageous social position.

The discovery of the New World stripped lands and choices from Indigenous North and South Americans while it created opportunities/choices for many Europeans. The Transatlantic Slave Trade robbed millions of Africans of the ability to make choices in their lives. After the end of the slave trade, colonization of Africa took lands and power away from many Africans. Colonization in Asia and Australia produced similar results for the Indigenous peoples of those continents. After the American Civil War. Jim Crow Laws in southern states prevented African Americans from claiming the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments.

Wars, droughts, famines, natural disasters, religions, and politics also affect the level of choices people of different regions enjoy.

The pandemic caused supply chain issues, recessions, inflation, price gouging, and global hardships felt by most of the world. Some people thrived while the majority suffered.

Not all choices are directly impacted by economics. Some choices are purely a matter of personal preference, but personal preferences can be influenced by our upbringing, environment, and our social status which can be affected by economics.

Even something as simple as the choice of your favorite color can be influenced by your upbringing or where you live.

In our May 2021 issue, we featured a quiz about the psychology of color. The answers to the questions help illustrate how a simple choice can be influenced by outside factors:

Answers to the May 2021 Psychology of Color Quiz:

1.    The use of color in advertising campaigns can increase brand recognition by 80%.

2.    In Marketing, purple is associated with spirituality, royalty, power, luxury, and wisdom. Overuse of the color can seem arrogant or cause frustration. Roku and Hallmark have purple logos.

3.    In Western cultures brides traditionally wear white, because this color is associated with cleanliness, purity, peace, and elegance. In several Asian countries, this color is a symbol of bad luck, mourning, and death and is only worn during funerals. In Peru, this color symbolizes good health and angels.

4.    In Marketing, the color red is associated with excitement, passion, danger, energy, and action. Coca-Cola and YouTube have red logos.

5.    It’s a common belief in Albania, Afghanistan, Iran, Greece, and Turkey that wearing a blue amulet shaped like an eye will protect the wearer or user from the evil eye.

6.    The color red in window displays attracts spontaneous purchasers.

7.    In Marketing, pink is most often associated with playfulness and products for women. The logos for T-Mobile and Barbie are pink.

8.    Prison cells are often painted a light shade of pink to be calming, stimulate the mind, and lower violent behavior.

9.    In Marketing, blue is associated with the sea and the sky and feelings of trust, calm, stability, peace, and harmony. Twitter and Samsung have blue logos.

10. Because it’s the color of long life, happiness, celebrations, prosperity, joy, and good luck in many Asian countries, it’s common for Asian brides to wear red wedding dresses. In India, this color is associated with spirituality, sensuality, fertility, power, wealth, fire, fear, beauty, love, and purity. 

11. White is usually the most prominent color displayed on an e-commerce website.

12. Blue is a masculine symbol in many cultures, and blue toys/clothing/bedroom colors are usually associated with boys. In China, it is associated with women. 

13. In Marketing, black is associated with elegance, sophistication, power, and mystery. Nike and Chanel have black logos.

14. Western cultures associate the color pink with love, romance, femininity, and girls’ clothing/toys/bedroom colors. In South Korea, this color represents trust and in Latin America, it symbolizes architecture.

15. In Marketing, orange is associated with creativity, balance, adventure, success, and enthusiasm. Home Depot and Nickelodeon have orange logos.

16. The color yellow is considered lucky in Thailand and people wear it every Monday to attract luck for the entire week.

17. In Marketing, brown is an earthy color associated with food, soil, wood, and stone. It causes people to have feelings of comfort, security, and casualness. UPS and Hershey’s are two iconic brown logos.

18. In Western culture, green is associated with nature, environmental awareness, envy, money, inexperience, and the military. In China, green is associated with infidelity. In Israel, green is associated with bad news, and in North Africa, it’s associated with corruption. People in Japan tend to love the color, green because it symbolizes eternal life.

19. In marketing, gray is associated with neutrality and balance. Apple and Mercedes Benz have gray logos.

20. In Egypt, orange is the color of mourning. In the West, it symbolizes warmth, security, and the harvest while in many Eastern cultures, this color symbolizes love, humility, good health, and happiness. It is the personal color of the Dutch royal family.

21. In Marketing, green is associated with nature, money, growth, health generosity, and fertility. Starbucks and John Deere have green logos.

22. The color, black is associated with formality, sophistication, mystery, bad luck, illness, fierceness, magic, mourning, evil, and death. In Africa, this color is a symbol of masculinity, maturity, and age. In the Middle East, it represents rebirth and mourning.

23. Purple dye was once quite rare and hard to come by because it was extracted from the banded dye-murex, a particular species of sea snails. Purple-colored cloth was so expensive to make, it became a symbol of the monarchy.

24. In Marketing, yellow is associated with sunshine, positivity, summer, vibrancy, happiness, optimism, and sometimes danger or deception. McDonald’s and Best Buy have yellow logos.

25. Blue light causes people to feel more relaxed. Some countries have begun to install this lighting hue in streetlights and subway/railway stations to help decrease/prevent violence/crimes and suicide attempts.