Date

6-16-2025

Department

School of Communication and the Arts

Degree

Master of Arts in Professional Communication (MA)

Chair

Marie Mallory

Keywords

Disney, communication, color, emotion, film, social learning theory

Disciplines

Communication

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to determine what impact Disney animated feature films have on audience color association. The problem is that Disney assigns colors to certain movie roles that are in contrast to what color theory posits or would assume. This study sought to determine if audiences that are highly saturated in Disney animated feature films receive a different message from colors than someone who does not regularly consume Disney films. This research examines the impact of Disney habitually assigning colors to characters in contrast to their traditional meaning on the emotional association of viewers through the theoretical lens of Bandura’s social learning theory (1963,1971). This study was conducted utilizing an online questionnaire and the hypotheses were tested using ordinal logistic regression to determine the predictability of the phenomenon. The findings show that participants with higher saturation in Disney animated feature films are more likely to have a color emotion association in line with Disney’s redesignation of color, while participants with lower saturation are more likely to have color emotion association in line with traditional color theory. Due to colors being connected to experiences and emotions, they are often used as a communication tool in film, literature, marketing, and self-expression to reach a desired goal. This study has implications for understanding behavioral and cognitive influence using animated media. This study has added to the field of communication by filling a gap in the research and building upon an established theory.

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