Republican red and Democrat blue — that hasn’t always been the case, and a study of both sides of the aisle found that one party liked the other party's color more.

That was part of an intriguing conversation with UW–Madison psychology professor, Dr. Karen Schloss, whose research looks at why we like certain colors, how our experiences shape those preferences and why our favorites can change over time — fall colors, anyone?

Schloss will give a free Badger Talk at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Holmen American Legion, hosted by the Holmen Public Library as part of the Wisconsin Science Festival. Her talk, where the audience can come with questions, will look at the science behind our favorite colors — and why the answer involves more than just personal taste.

On the show, we also get into why the colors of fall can become more appealing as the leaves change and the pumpkin spice flows, how positive and negative experiences shape our color preferences, and what a yellowish-green shade associated with vomit can tell us about why some colors are less popular than others.

In this conversation:

• Why green? Schloss questions why a certain radio hosts might be drawn to a color — and what experiences have to do with it.
• Pumpkin spice: Schloss explains her research into why some people get more drawn to fall colors as the leaves change, while others go the opposite direction? 
• The most loved color: There’s a clear favorite in Schloss’s research — and a shade that consistently ranks at the bottom. What makes the difference?
• Can you change someone's favorite color?: Schloss described what happened when her team tried to change people's color preferences in the lab — and whether those changes lasted.
• Colors that communicate: Schloss studies how color helps people make sense of information, from maps and graphs to diagrams — and how the right colors can make those visuals easier to understand.
• Red, politics and blue: While red and blue are affiliated with the two political parties, Schloss did research and found one group actually tends to like the other’s color more.
• Election Day affiliation: Schloss found that people's color preferences became more aligned with their political party on Election Day. Why? The party associations may have been top of mind.

Any school, group or organization that would like to host a Badger Talk, either in person or online, email here or request a speaker online at badgertalks.wisc.edu.