The 12 emotional journeys of color psychology

Journey mapping is one of the most widely used tools in interactive design, helping us create products and campaigns that connect with users on a deeper emotional level. This is key to building long-term loyalty, where users and customers feel an irrational sense of trust and gratitude toward your brand.

In this article, I’ll explain what an emotional journey is to give you a strategic perspective on how we use emotional design to shape user experiences. Then we’ll explore the 12 major emotional journeys, helping you better understand the different types of transitions that motivate and reinforce user behavior. This will give you — and potentially your colleagues — a shared set of terms for describing emotional journeys, making it easier to discuss and debate design strategies.

Finally, we’ll look at a new wave of color science that explores the link between color and motivation, so you can use color more strategically to strike the right emotional tone.

Cugelman emotion map

We’re going to use the Cugelman Emotion Map to explain each of the emotional transitions and look at them strategically, so let’s start with an overview. I developed the Emotion Map in the Behavioral Design Academy as a model based on neuroscience and psychology of emotion, that I simplified to help designers apply science-based emotional design strategies.

In this article, I’ll give you an overview of the Map, then we’ll step up and use the model to understand the bigger picture in emotional design. If you’d like to explore it in more detail, here’s a deeper explanation: https://www.behavioraldesign.academy/color-psychology/colors-and-emotions

The Cugelman Emotion Map divides emotional experience into four quadrants — each representing one of the broad emotional states that either motivate or reinforce people’s behavior.

Motivators vs. reinforcers

People often confuse the terms motivator with reinforcer — and while they’re closely related, they’re actually two distinct psychological principles that we use in different ways.

You can usually tell when someone doesn’t understand the difference because they use the term “carrot and stick” inconsistently — sometimes as a motivator, other times as a reinforcer — without realizing they’re blending two separate principles. This kind of confusion can seriously harm their design and communication work.

It’s hard to apply psychology effectively when you mix up the most fundamental principles. So let’s make sure we’re clear on the difference.

Motivators are design strategies that evoke excitement or fear about a future outcome. We use the term motivator to describe how emotional design can spark a desire to act — either to gain something desirable (which evokes an optimistic emotion) or avoid something unpleasant (that evokes an insecure emotion).
Reinforcers, on the other hand, are design strategies that deliver an emotionally rewarding or painful experience in the present. These aren’t about driving action, but about reinforcing behavior — shaping user habits by encouraging repetition of something rewarding, and discouraging of things that feel painful or frustrating.

Let’s contrast these a bit more.

Motivators are emotions that drive people to take action. Reinforcers, on the other hand, are the emotional rewards or punishments that shape how people behave over time — determining whether they’ll repeat a behavior or avoid it in the future.

Motivators reflect the energizing emotional response to an anticipated threat someone wants to avoid, or an opportunity they hope to obtain. Reinforcers describe the emotional experience based on what we achieved — whether it’s a positive emotion tied to success, which boosts the odds of repeating the behavior, or a negative emotion tied to failure, which teaches us to try harder or adopt a different approach.

While motivators inspire us to act, reinforcers teach us how to act.

Since emotions can be used both to motivate and to reinforce user behavior, understanding how they work gives us a more strategic way to design emotional experiences.

Let’s look at each quadrant in the Cugelman Emotion Map to better understand how these emotions function, and then we’ll build on this, by exploring the 12 transitions and colors psychology of each quadrant.

Motivators (Green quadrants)

In the Cugelman Emotion Map, the two motivator quadrants are shown in green, representing go. These are the areas where we people feel motivated to act — either by creating opportunities drive their optimism, or threats that drive their feelings of insecurity. Here’s an explanation of each:

Optimistic (High energy, positive emotion): This is where excitement, curiosity, and engagement live. These emotions drive focus, approach and movement towards the goal. Strategically, this is where we showcase incentives, highlight product value, and aim to satisfy our users’ needs. If you don’t offer enough to evoke these emotions, your product will feel unmotivating but if you overdo it, you may come across as selling too hard.
Insecure (High energy, negative emotion): These are the stress emotions, with anxiety, worry or a sense of pressure. Strategically, we may use urgency, FOMO, or any of many threat avoidance strategies to drive action. However, this must be used carefully — too much can feel manipulative, overly negative, or stressful. Think of it like a spice: just a dash can be effective, but too much is overwhelming.

Reinforcers (Red quadrants)

The two reinforcer quadrants are shown in red. These reflect the emotional experiences users feel after taking action — either a rewarding or painful experience.

Secure (Low energy, positive emotion): Users feel calm, trusting, and satisfied. Strategically, this is where we want users to land — feeling confident that our product consistently meets their needs. This is the emotional zone where we build long-term loyalty which is often the key to designing a successful product. The downside here, is users can start to feel complacent and start to disengage once they get what they thought they wanted.
Pessimistic (Low energy, negative emotion): This is where users feel disappointed, trapped, or helpless. It signals disengagement and the risk of churn. But these emotions are potentially dangerous. If users stay here too long, this is the zone where resentment can form. Resentment is the opposite of loyalty, where people will never trust your company and may go out of their way to harm your reputation and income. Never leave users stuck in this state for long, unless you enjoy responding to nasty comments on social media. The up side is that if your competitors trap users in this quadrant, you can easily poach them.

This gives us a basic overview of the Cugelman Emotion Map, so let’s move on to the strategic use of these emotions.

User journeys are emotional transitions

Years ago, I became interested in writing screenplays and read several classic books on the subject — including Aristotle’s Poetics. This 2,000-year-old classic analyzes theater and explains how stories resonate with audiences.

While reading it, I sketched out a diagram of a play, as a timeline with a curve representing the emotional tone. It rises toward high positivity, then dips into lower negativity over time — similar to how we compose music, shifting between moments of high and low tension.

Years later, I discovered that Kurt Vonnegut had used a similar framework to analyze the narrative arcs of literature — possibly also inspired by Aristotle. I also came across a scientific paper that used AI to analyze the plot structures of numerous books, using the same emotional diagram.

I’ve adapted this concept into the Cugelman Emotion Map, which we’ll use to understand the rise and fall of emotional tension as part of our emotional design strategies.

To show you how it works, let’s walk through a classic love story — between a frustrated user and an online product that steps in as the hero, solves their problem, and ultimately earns their long-term loyalty. In the chart below, you’ll see how each transition (in the Emotion Map) places our user in one emotional state before and another right after.

In this story, our user begins in a state of contentment but soon realizes they have a problem. They try to solve it, fail, and gradually sink into a sense of despair — feeling hopeless and ready to give up on finding a solution.

Then they discover your product, which sparks a sense of renewed optimism. They decide to give it a try. Your product delivers on its promises, and as the user starts to experience real benefits, their trust in your product and brand begins to grow.

If we continue to reinforce their trust by consistently delivering on our promises, the user may eventually feel something even more powerful: gratitude and the greatest prize of all — their loyalty. At this point, they’re not just satisfied; they’re emotionally invested.

The 12 emotional journeys

Based on the four quadrants, there are 12 primary emotional journeys that represent every possible transition across the motivators and reinforcers.

These transitions can happen quickly, but they can also unfold over a much longer period — sometimes taking months or even years — as people gradually shift from one emotional state to another. For example, someone might spend years feeling pessimistic about their life before something changes and they find a new way forward.

To help you better understand these patterns, below is an overview of all twelve emotional journeys, including one in-depth example for each quadrant.

Optimism strategies

These are the most positive emotional transitions, where users pursue a goal as we support them. If your only aim is to get users to take a single action, one optimistic motivational strategy may be enough. However, in most cases, we use these strategies to prompt initial action, then we start focusing on the secure quadrant, where we work to build a long-term, repeat relationship.

That said, optimistic emotions are the primary tool we use to get people started. Below are three common emotional journeys:

Inspiring: Our audience is already content with their current situation, but by offering something truly exciting, they feel that things can go from good to great. This is how we fire up their excitement to leave their place of comfort.
Incentivizing: Our audience feels pressure to avoid an imminent threat while progressively feeling optimistic that their course of action will help them avoid the threat and gain benefits. At some point, the positives outweigh the negatives, leaving our audience more positive about the experience.
Liberating: Our audience feels trapped in a hopeless position, but when we provide the promise of escape or change for the better, pessimistic despair fades in favor of optimistic hope.

Credit Karma aims to inspire users

Users often settle when their credit score is “good enough” and stop thinking about improving. This is a common challenge in behavioral design. Once people reach a goal, they tend to disengage — and that’s often when we see them regress, too.

While the ultimate goal of behavior change is usually long-term loyalty in the secure quadrant, once people reach this point, we typically need to shift towards maintenance strategies to keep them regular. Credit Karma uses mainly inspiring tactics, motivating users with positivity and encouraging continued progress through uplifting, goal-oriented messages. Yes, there is a slight dash of implied fear messaging, but overall, this is far more positive than negative, with a nice calming blue.

Insecurity strategies

This quadrant involves using stress-arousing techniques that motivate our audience to move in the right direction or stop them from heading the wrong way. I recommend including at least a small dose of these techniques consistently. However, it’s important not to overdo them, as they can backfire when misapplied. Here are the three transitions:

Pressuring — Our audience is moving toward something positive, but then realizes there’s an emerging threat. Their current path becomes more attractive because it will also help them avoid this imminent danger.
Agitating — Our audience feels secure at first, but their contentment turns to stress as an emerging threat slowly takes over, dominating their thoughts and leaving them feeling they must act urgently.
Scaring — Our audience feels trapped in an emotionally painful situation and then experiences growing anxiety to act urgently to avoid an imminent threat they may feel powerless to escape. This is an extremely stressful and punishing transition, but a mainstay of political communications.

Booking.com pressures customers with threats

Booking makes you feel optimistic that you’ll be able to get the room you want, but then they layer-on classic pressure tactics by telling you that others are booking that same room right now, forcing you from the solidarity of your safe bedroom to a public space where you’re now competing to not lose that room.

They use their friendly colors in combination with some alarming red, warning you that you’d better act or risk losing that sweet deal. You can read more about booking.com’s social influence strategies here.

A common technique is to make users aware that if they don’t act someone else will get it first, forcing them into a competitive, zero-sum game they never intended to play. Booking.com is famous for this, with this example showing how they’re telling me other people are booking this property now. They really turn up the heat later when I reach the booking page, telling me someone else will get the room if I dare close the page.

Security strategies

For most of what we do, this quadrant represents the ultimate goal of emotional design: fostering long-term, loyal relationships with our target audience.

When I say loyalty, I don’t mean repeat habits. I’m talking about something deeper — when your audience forms an emotional bond with your brand and starts acting in ways that don’t always make logical sense. They’ll resist switching to competitors even when better deals are available, and some may even feel like they’re “cheating” on your brand because their loyalty feels authentic. These are also the people who often become brand advocates and drive referrals.

However, the downside of bringing people into this secure quadrant is that they can become complacent. This is why we typically shift into maintenance psychology once our audience reaches this stage.

Below are the three main ways we bring people into the secure quadrant:

Gratifying — Our audience is pursuing something truly motivating, which is fulfilling enough that they feel secure in their ability to achieve it or trust those who provide it — ideally our brand. This is the most satisfying and rewarding experience, the place where trust and loyalty are nurtured, as our audience feels compelled to rep
Relieving — Our audience is actively working to avoid an imminent threat, and then discovers a solution that may not excite them but solves the problem, leading them to feel relaxed and secure as tension fades into relief.
Saving — Our audience feels trapped in a painful situation but then discovers a solution that may not have seemed exciting yet lifts them from their plight, leaving them feeling secure and filled with deep gratitude.

Zappos gratifies its customers

Zappos has earned one of the top reputations for phenomenal customer support — and they’ve clearly learned a critical lesson: when customers are pursuing a goal, the company must help them achieve it and never leave them feeling trapped with a product they don’t want or a transaction they consider unfair.

What’s impressive about their site is how easy it is to find the support page. Not only does it offer a straightforward way to return products, but contacting the company is also straightforward. Compare that to many other companies, where contact info is buried in the footer or hidden behind a bizarre maze of frustrating, nonsensical complexity.

And when you call that number, you discover how Zappos truly gratifies customers and earns loyalty: by offering support staff who weren’t hired just for competence, but equally for their deeply empathetic personalities.

Pessimism strategies

The last quadrant is the most negative — and the riskiest to work with — as it deals with our most disheartening emotions. Unlike the secure emotions that build loyalty, this quadrant is where self-hate or long-term resentment toward your brand can take root — the exact opposite of what we want to achieve.

Users can end up here intentionally, through sadistic design, or more commonly, through simple incompetence. Despite this, there are situations where it’s necessary to take users into this space — for example, when they haven’t paid their bills or we have to close an unprofitable product that people depend on. Whether you’re in damage control mode or trying to turn a bad experience into a positive one, it’s critical to understand these emotions and how they function.

The upside is that when your competitors have driven their users into this quadrant, they’re ripe for defection. All you need to do is step in as the savior, with a product that makes people feel optimistic that it’s time to try something new.

Here are the three main ways users end up in pessimistic emotional states:

Overwhelming: Our audience tries to avoid a threat, but when escape proves impossible, they experience the consequences directly and find themselves trapped in helplessness.
Discontenting: Our audience once felt secure, but as their sense of safety erodes, they begin to feel pessimistic, finding themselves trapped in an emotionally punishing situation.
Disappointing: Our audience was pursuing an exciting opportunity, only to end up worse off, where hope turns to disappointment and they feel trapped in an awful situation.

Temu’s overwhelming wheel of hell

Temu earns the award for having one of the most frustrating web interfaces that overwhelms users. Instead of allowing people to use their mobile website freely, they aggressively push users toward their mobile app using a manipulative design pattern.

When you search for products on their mobile web interface, a spinning gambling-wheel pops up, forcing you to play a fake game, win a misleading prize, and then pressuring you to download their app to not lose it.

If you don’t download the app, the same popup keeps appearing whenever you return to the search results page — making the site far too frustrating to use. On the other hand, if you download the app, you risk installing potential spyware linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Either way, you lose.

So to get their low prices, you must pay the real price — stress or privacy risks — and each sucks. So the only real choice is not to use their product and assume there’s a hidden cost to their deals.

Colors of emotional journeys

When it comes to visual design strategies during transitions, color psychology can be a powerful tool for amplifying emotional tone. But before diving in, let’s clear up a few common misunderstandings.

Universal color-emotion claims are usually nonsense

First, many of the so-called magical links between color and emotion are largely nonsense — ideas invented, recycled, and repeated over time. The design industry has long had a quiet love affair with color pseudoscience, but that approach is becoming increasingly outdated.

Today, a new wave of research in color psychology and neuroscience is uncovering real, scientifically supported connections between color and emotion. The problem is that much of this knowledge remains buried in academic papers. That’s why I, along with many others, am working to make this research more accessible.

Color-emotion associations are context-specific

Second, color–emotion associations are real, but they’re context dependent. This means color must always be evaluated within the situation it’s being used. When color and context align, emotional impact is amplified. When they don’t, your message can be weakened and the user experience disrupted. This principle is called color-in-context theory.

When any color matches the emotional tone of the context, psychologists call this color congruency. A mismatch creates incongruency, a subtle but jarring feeling that makes it hard for people to understand what’s going on, while also eroding trust.

For example, if you’re shopping and see a red sticker on jeans you’ve been eyeing, you may feel excited — red signals a sale. But if you’re a crypto trader and see a red candlestick on a chart, your heart might sink — red signals a financial loss. In one case, red feels positive; in the other, negative. The emotional response comes not from the color itself, but from what it means in that specific context.

This is why blanket statements like “red means danger” or “blue means calm” are misleading. What truly matters is color authenticity — choosing colors that accurately reflect the emotional context, rather than applying assumed meanings arbitrarily.

When color and context are congruent, design becomes more emotionally resonant and persuasive. When mismatched, it creates friction.

Congruent colors also enhance cognitive fluency — users process information more quickly, trust the experience more, and are more likely to accept the message. Incongruent colors slow processing, raise skepticism, and prompt users to scrutinize more carefully — not always in a good way.

Color-emotion associations are rooted in facial perception

Third, if color-emotion associations aren’t magical, where do they come from?

The common explanation points to culture. While cultural meaning plays a role, growing research suggests a deeper origin: our ability to read emotional cues from facial color changes.

Babies can identify five basic colors — purple, blue, green, yellow, and red — the same hues our brains use to interpret emotional signals in faces. While cultural learning shapes these associations over time, the foundational training begins in infancy. Across all cultures, humans learn to associate certain facial color patterns with specific emotional states in specific contexts.

Context matters here, too. If someone apologizes but doesn’t blush, you might doubt their sincerity. What you call “intuition” could be your brain registering the absence of a familiar emotional color pattern. Similarly, we judge health based on skin tone. A greenish hue might suggest illness to you; to a doctor, it could signal a specific condition.

Here’s how it works: Our faces emit subtle color patterns based on blood oxygenation. Oxygenated blood creates red tones; deoxygenated blood creates blue ones. These combine into distinct facial color signatures for different emotions — and they’re visible across all skin tones. People of all ethnicities are able to detect these shifts within their communities, regardless of melanin levels. This appears to be a universal human trait.

These signals are so consistent that researchers have developed video algorithms capable of estimating heartbeat and emotional state based on facial color shifts. When people view the color masks generated by these systems, they’re surprisingly accurate at guessing emotional states — further validating the theory that facial color cues underpin emotional perception.

While cultural influence is real, our lifelong training to read facial color changes is likely the strongest source of our color-emotion associations.

We project facial-color emotions to non-human things

Fourth, research suggests that we unconsciously project facial color associations onto inanimate objects.

Humans are pathological anthropomorphizers — we assign human traits to animals, machines, and even lifeless objects. The fact that a “pet rock” can have a personality says it all.

We don’t just see a color — we interpret it through the lens of human emotion. That’s why a blue couch might feel “calm,” or a red button might feel “urgent.” We’re unconsciously applying the same facial color-emotion patterns we’ve observed in people to everything around us.

In a 2018 study, Thorstenson and colleagues asked participants to match objects, facial expressions, and emotions with different colors. While the match wasn’t perfect, in the chart below, you’ll see there was a strikingly close fit — supporting the idea that our general color-emotion associations originate from the emotional color patterns we first learned by observing our parents’ emotions, and their facial signals.

Color contexts of the emotional quadrants

Because color-emotion links rely on authentic, context-specific use of color, I’ve merged findings from a wide range of scientific studies and mapped them to the Cugelman Emotion Map. This framework includes major motivational contexts behind emotional experience — such as physiological wellbeing, safety, social bonding, status, and reproductive instincts (love, sex, parenting).

We won’t go into the full details here, just the high-level emotional tones used for motivating and reinforcing behavior.

This framework gives us a basic color palette that congruently amplifies the emotional tone across the “12 Journeys” users take as they transition from one emotional state to another.

Here’s a high-level overview of the emotional color quadrants:

Optimistic-to-pessimistic emotions: These range from vibrant rainbow hues in the optimistic quadrant to desaturated gray tones in the pessimistic quadrant.
Insecure-to-secure emotions: These range from red, oxygenated blood tones in the insecure quadrant to calm, blue-appearing blood tones in the secure quadrant.

Optimistic-to-pessimistic emotions: Desaturated to saturated colors

When exploring the motivational context of emotional quadrants, certain key colors do emerge; however, the general rule centers on saturation. A well-known study found that among the range of optimistic and pessimistic emotions, one pattern stood out: optimistic emotions are strongly associated with saturated, vivid colors — the kind seen in children’s programming or rainbow imagery. These colors tend to feel more exciting and energetic.

By contrast, colors tied to pessimistic emotions become increasingly desaturated, often fading toward gray. These muted tones reflect a loss of vitality and align with feelings of decline, detachment, or emotional fatigue.

A classic example is the “before and after” narrative often used in marketing. The “before” scene typically features dull, desaturated tones — representing a life that’s uninspired or unfulfilled. The “after” scene bursts into vibrant, saturated color, instantly signaling emotional uplift and positivity.

Optimistic colors

Optimistic colors span the full spectrum but tend to lean toward warmer tones. As a general rule, a diverse palette of saturated, vibrant hues conveys positivity and emotional energy.

Research from human facial studies shows that red is associated with competitiveness, athletic performance, dominance, and social status. As red shifts toward yellow-orange, it begins to signal health and even sexual attractiveness — patterns commonly observed in facial color and dating studies.

That said, red’s emotional meaning shifts radically depending on context. While it can be used for optimistic emotions, I typically avoid it as a strategic designer due to its potential to send mixed signals. In positive contexts, I minimize its use, reserving it primarily for insecure emotions where it carries more weight.

The general guideline is clear: use a vibrant, colorful palette to represent optimistic positivity, but be selective about how and when red is applied.

Pessimistic colors

Pessimistic emotions are best expressed through desaturated tones — colors that appear faded, aged, or washed out. As hues lose saturation, they naturally drift toward gray, mirroring emotional states such as sadness, depletion, or disconnection.

In fact, the link between gray and depression is so strong it runs both ways. People experiencing depression often perceive the world as more gray and tend to apply filters to their Instagram photos that appear bluer, darker, and grayer.

Some hues carry specific negative connotations. For instance: Green is often linked to illness and has been shown to reduce perceived attractiveness in dating studies. Greenish-yellow can signal disgust — which makes sense, as it’s a visible indicator of serious, potentially life-threatening health conditions. Red can suggest blushing, embarrassment, or shame. Blue is closely associated with sadness.

I generally avoid red and blue in pessimistic contexts, keeping them for more sharply defined emotional contrasts elsewhere in the palette. But if you do use them, desaturate them in depressive or low-energy contexts to maintain emotional accuracy.

Insecure-to-secure emotions: Red-blooded to blue tones

Facial coloration offers one of the clearest explanations for our color-emotion associations. Specifically, it’s the interplay between oxygenated red veins and deoxygenated blue arteries that produces the wide range of facial colors linked to different emotional states.

While specific motivational contexts bring their own colors, the broad trend is a shift from red to blue across the insecure-to-secure spectrum.

A classic example can be found in warnings, alerts, and system messages, which almost always use red to signal urgency or threat. On the other hand, websites that aim to reassure users — such as those handling transactions or personal data — often use baby blues, soft gradients, and calming skies to convey security and trust.

Insecure colors

In states of insecurity — when people feel vulnerable, anxious, or threatened — red becomes a dominant color. It’s consistently linked to perceptions of aggression and arousal, though the exact meaning depends heavily on context. A flushed face might indicate hostility in a confrontation, or attraction in a romantic moment.

Because red is emotionally intense and highly context-sensitive, I reserve it primarily for anxious or threat-based emotions, using it strategically and sparingly in other areas.

Darker tones can also express the intensity of insecurity — leaning more toward deep black rather than neutral gray. These hues add weight and contrast, especially in high-impact or “reverse” palettes. Greenish-brown also fits into this emotional range, often signaling disgust or contempt and reinforcing the darker, more defensive aspects of insecurity.

Secure colors

Lower blood oxygenation is associated with relaxed, stable emotional states, which are often reflected in blue-to-purple hues, with some slight extensions into red. These tones evoke calm, trust, contentment, and emotional stability — qualities tied to low arousal and composure.

As emotional activation increases slightly, emotions like admiration or appreciation begin to shift toward subtly warmer tones within the same spectrum. Still, I usually keep these emotions within the bluish palette, as it best conveys the ease, connection, and quiet assurance of trust.

Final words

I hope this article offered a fresh perspective on color psychology and sparked some new ideas for how you might apply it to your own projects.

I’m sharing this as a test of the structure for a book I’m currently publishing on the topic. If you have any feedback on the format — whether you found it helpful or see areas for improvement — I’d genuinely appreciate hearing it.

Enjoy the journey.

Meet the author

Dr. Brian Cugelman is a specialist in using psychology and data science for digital products.

Thousands of students from companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Salesforce have completed his digital psychology training.

He has authored over 25 publications and spoken at MIT, the University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins, and various conferences, including TEDx.

Dr. Cugelman leads the Behavioral Design Academy, offering training on applying psychology to technology. Connect at: https://www.behavioraldesign.academy.

ARTICLE SOURCE:
https://www.behavioraldesign.academy/color-psychology/authors-final-words

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