The Way Colors Change Our Lives
By Eng Gin Moe
Humans have always associated colors with different emotions and have always reacted to them in different ways. Blue invokes feelings of sadness. Green represents envy. White is often associated with purity. Black means death. Yellow is often interpreted happiness. People perceive purple as the color of royalty. Every color has significance and many colors have multiple meanings. Though these meanings are just human perceptions of the colors, researchers have now found that colors may affect the way humans subconsciously.
In a study done by researchers at
the University of British Columbia with six hundred people, it was found that the
colors red and blue have different and surprising effects on people. In the
experiment, the participants were given certain tasks with words or images
shown on computer screens against red, blue, or neutral backgrounds. The results
indicated that the people who did the tasks on the red screen paid better attention
to detail than those who did the same task on the different color backgrounds.
Also, the results showed that people with the blue screen did better on tests
that needed imagination than other people with the same task on different color
backgrounds.
Experts say that color may affect people’s performance on reasoning and memory related tasks because of the moods that they generate. When a person is in a situation that feels problematic, that person is more likely to pay attention to detail but it interferes with creative activities. On the other hand, a person who feels happy is more creative and less logical. Even though the experiment shows some interesting results, experts warn that the effects colors have may be of little importance. The reason for this warning is that in different contexts, colors can represent and invoke different feelings. For example, red can represent danger like an alarm or red can be associated with a pleasant thing like an apple. At the same time, walking across a frozen river means that blue is a dangerous thing. Therefore, color effects on humans are not always consistent with everyone and in different environments and this makes the results of this experiment somewhat unreliable. Though this study brings up fascinating question about how colors affect humans, many more similar experiments must be done so that it can be proved that the results of this experiment were valid answers and not just a fluke.
References:
1) ARTICLE: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06color.html
