Mood rings are a popular fashion accessory and jewelry item that became a major trend in the 1970s. Their ability to change colors based on the wearer’s mood, temperature changes, and emotional state fascinated people. While the hype around mood rings died down after the initial 1970s craze, they remain a novelty item that gives some insight into emotions. But what do all the different colors of a mood ring really mean?
It will explore how mood rings work, factors impacting the colors, and what each shade is thought to represent about your mood.
History and Origins of Mood Rings
Mood rings first emerged in the mid-1970s as a fad jewelry piece marketed under names like “mood stones” and “emotion rings.” They were invented in 1975 by jewelry makers Maris Ambats and Josh Reynolds. These jewelry designers worked with a specialized heat-sensitive crystal to create rings that would change color in response to shifts in temperature.
The concept behind mood rings ties into color psychology and the idea that colors can represent different emotions. While mood rings colors don’t necessarily reveal someone’s true emotional state, they react to subtle physiological changes brought on by moods. This interaction between emotions, physical states, and colors popularized mood rings as a novelty jewelry item.
How Mood Rings Work – The Science Behind the Colors
So how do these ever-changing jewelry pieces actually work? Mood rings contain special thermochromic crystals inside the band that are calibrated to change colors based on precise temperature readings. The crystals are usually quartz or liquid crystal, coated with special pigments or metals like silver chloride or germanium nickel.
As the temperature of your skin shifts, the crystals in the ring also change temperature. This alters the molecular structure of the coating on the crystals, causing them to reflect different wavelengths of light. The result is a visible color change in the stone!
Mood ring designers calibrate the initial or resting color to blue or green within the average human peripheral temperature range around 82degF (28degC). When worn, the ring picks up even minute shifts in temperature as your hands warm up or cool down. The corresponding color changes are thought to correlate with changes in mood or shifts between emotional states.
Meanings of Mood Ring Colors
Now that we know how mood rings reflect temperature changes through different colors, what do all these colors actually indicate? While mood ring hues aren’t an exact science, generally accepted meanings give us clues into emotions.
Black Color
A mood ring turning black reflects incredibly low temperature readings. This may indicate high stress levels or anxiety causing reduced blood flow to the hands. It can also reflect poor circulation or exposure to extreme cold when not worn on the hands.
Blue Color
Blue is the base color for most mood rings when calibrated to the average human skin temperature of 82degF (28degC). This happy medium color suggests a neutral, average mood–neither positive or negative. Blue indicates a relaxed state.
Green Color
Green usually represents a normal, steady emotional state reflecting balance and harmony. Deeper emerald greens are also considered colors of growth, peace, healing, empathy, and renewal.
Yellow Color
Bright golden yellow on mood rings picks up slight skin temperature elevations reflecting cheeriness, optimism, joy, clarity, energy, intellect, and creativity. Yellow shows an uplifted emotional state.
Brown Color
As mood ring colors shift warmer into browns, this can signal confusion, restlessness, impatience, or nervousness. Brown reflects uneasiness and hesitant emotional spaces.
Grey Color
Grey mood ring color means the emotions are neutral, unclear, or in transition. It signals being indecisive or unsure of feelings. Too much grey reflects indifference, sadness, exhaustion, or lack of energy and excitement.
Purple Color
Purple mood ring hues indicate very dreamy, romantic emotions where fantasy rules over logic. Purple reflects creative, compassionate spaces focused on spiritual awakening and magical thinking over reason.
Pink Color
Pink is associated with sweet, affectionate emotions like new love, infatuation, intimacy, femininity. But excess pinkness veering towards red suggests anxiety, self-consciousness, and nervous tension.
Orange Color
Bright, vibrant orange shown on mood rings picks up elevated skin warmth reflecting high energy, passion, enthusiasm, and explosive emotions. Orange shows adventure, socialness, and outgoing moods.
Red Color
As mood ring bands turn bright red, this color reflects hot emotions like anger, aggression, passion, lust, irritation, rage, danger, impatience. It signals alarms going off around feeling threatened or competing feelings.
White Color
When mood ring stones turn pure white or opaque, it reflects very high readings of skin temperature. This suggests intense emotions like shock, alarm, fear, stress reaction, or panic. Extreme mood swings fall in the white color range.
Factors Impacting Mood Ring Color Changes
While mood ring colors attempt to reflect emotional shifts through temperature changes, many external or environmental factors also impact readings.
Room temperature and weather conditions alter skin warmth activating the heat-sensitive crystals. Intense emotions and moods also spark physiological arousal processes like increased blood flow or nervous system reactions that warm or cool extremities like hands and fingers.
But mood fluctuations triggered by workload, activities, sleep changes, diet, menstrual cycles, medications, exhaustion, jetlag, or alcohol and drugs also impact temperature regulation and mood ring colors. So take colors as a general guide, not definitive proof of emotional states!
Mood rings offer a fun peek into feelings and emotional states through the meanings behind the different colors shown. As body temperature fluctuates, the heat-sensitive crystals change color based on small shifts in temperature. While mood rings can’t definitively diagnose moods, they react to physiological processes influenced by emotions and give wearers an objective visual representation of inner shifts.
Today, mood rings remain a popular jewelry choice for their retro appeal and novelty factor in linking color with emotions. Their ability to reflect invisible mood processes through visible color changes keeps mood rings an enduring entity of the 1970s that continues today.