I’ve heard of colour affecting mood, but not performance. Interesting paper in last week’s Science on several studies examining performance and creativity in various tasks when using a computer with different background colours. It seems surprising to me that they were able to get significant differences simply by changing the background colour, not the content, or anything else.<\/p>\n
Existing research reports inconsistent findings with regard to the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Some research suggests that blue or green leads to better performances than red; other studies record the opposite. Current work reconciles this discrepancy. We demonstrate that red (versus blue) color induces primarily an avoidance (versus approach) motivation (study 1, n = 69) and that red enhances performance on a detail-oriented task, whereas blue enhances performance on a creative task (studies 2 and 3, n = 208 and 118). Further, we replicate these results in the domains of product design (study 4, n = 42) and persuasive message evaluation (study 5, n = 161) and show that these effects occur outside of individuals\u2019 consciousness (study 6, n = 68). We also provide process evidence suggesting that the activation of alternative motivations mediates the effect of color on cognitive task performances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances<\/a>. Ravi Mehta and Rui (Juliet) Zhu (5 February 2009) Science<\/i> [DOI: 10.1126\/science.1169144]<\/p>\n
Why am I posting this?<\/b>
\nI’m interested in pretty much any verifiable means of enhancing human cognitive performance, even if they seem a bit odd. If background colour affects us sufficiently that our performance and mood changes, I have to wonder what would happen if our whole vision was tinted. And, what does my green screen background colour mean? Interesting, if kooky-sounding, idea for augmenting reality. Brings to mind the general idea of using AR as a simple means of interposing image processing between the viewer and the viewed. Could be particularly useful for people with various vision deficiencies and colour blindness.<\/p>\nAlso, interesting point about likely variation between North American students (as interviewed in the study) and students of other nationalities.<\/p>\n
via Cosmos<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve heard of colour affecting mood, but not performance. Interesting paper in last week’s Science on several studies examining performance and creativity in various tasks when using a computer with different background colours. It seems surprising to me that they were able to get significant differences simply by changing the background colour, not the content,\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,15],"tags":[87,86],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-reviews","tag-enhancement","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}