The colour model of behaviour

The colour model of behaviour is based on the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and his notion of ‘psychological preferences’.

This refers to:

  • how we interact with the world around us and where we get our energies from (introversion v. extraversion)
  • how we make decisions (thinking v. feeling)
  • how we interpret the world around us (sensing v. intuition).

These are not binary but a continuous spectrum, and all are represented by these 4 colour energies.

We run an 8-week programme with young people based on The Colour Model.

Points to note:

  1. We all have and can use all 4 of the colour energies
  2. Our life’s experiences will have developed preferences in ourselves, so we’ll each have a dominant energy, supported by a secondary, tertiary and least
  3. No one energy is better or worse than another
  4. Each colour energy has both strengths and weaknesses
  5. We tend to connect more easily with those who share a similar style to ourselves
  6. Within the model are ‘opposites’ – blue and yellow, red and green
  1. People whose order of colour preferences is opposite to mine look at the world and interact with it in a completely different way from me. We are therefore likely in the first instance to clash – we have different priorities and approaches, communication styles and needs, outlook on life as a whole, and find each other altogether ‘difficult’.
  2. Contradictorily, however, these are also the people from whom we can benefit the most. They can help us see things from a different angle and enable us to appreciate and value differences. They are our ‘check and balance’, the yin to our yang.