Why is Black the Color of Death?

Studies have shown most colors have more positive than negative associations, and even when a color has negative association, it is normally only when used in a particular context.

Black is often seen as the ‘color’ of death in Western culture. This is likely because when things die the rotting flesh will turn black, and it is also the color of wood after fire has completely consumed it. Black is also the ‘color’ of the unknown, since darkness hinders vision.

The initial fourteenth-century European event was called the ‘Great Mortality’ by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the ‘Black Death’. It has been popularly thought that the name came from a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in which the sufferers’ skin would blacken due to subdermal hemorrhages. However, the term refers in fact to the figurative sense of ‘black’ (glum, lugubrious or dreadful).

The Black Death, or Black Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. It began in south-western Asia and spread to Europe by the late 1340s, where it received its name Black Death. The total number of deaths worldwide from the pandemic is estimated at 75 million people. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe’s population.

People in many cultures have an automatic negative perception of the color black. Thomas Gilovich and Mark Frank found that sports teams with primarily black uniforms were significantly more likely to receive penalties in historical data. Students were more likely to infer negative traits from a picture of a player wearing a black uniform. They also taped staged football matches, with one team wearing black and another wearing white. Experienced referees were more likely to penalize black-wearing players for nearly identical plays. Finally, groups of students tended to prefer more aggressive sports if wearing black shirts themselves.