Feb 17 2009
The Non-Linear Brain
Our brains do not process information as if it were a series of numbers to progress along and sum. Most of the action likely occurs beyond awareness. And there is a surprising variety of “inputs:” memory, emotion, intellectual concepts, sensorimotor “concepts,” sights, sounds, and even smells (you are more likely to decide to buy something it gives off a heavenly aroma).
Interior decorators have long based color schemes on the “mood” they want to create. Recent research suggests that certain colors may actually influence cognitive functioning.
Between 2007 and 2008, the researchers tracked more than 600 participants’ performance on six cognitive tasks that required either detail-orientation or creativity. Most experiments were conducted on computers, with a screen that was red, blue or white.
Red boosted performance on detail-oriented tasks such as memory retrieval and proofreading by as much as 31 per cent compared to blue. Conversely, for creative tasks such as brainstorming, blue environmental cues prompted participants to produce twice as many creative outputs as when under the red colour condition.
The author of the study, Juliet Zhu, provides an explanation for the measured affect of color. Her reasoning is interesting, but I think it lack’s a crucial component.
These variances are caused by different unconscious motivations that red and blue activate, says Zhu, noting that colour influences cognition and behavior through learned associations. . . .
Thanks to stop signs, emergency vehicles and teachers’ red pens, we associate red with danger, mistakes and caution . . . .
The avoidance motivation, or heightened state, that red activates makes us vigilant and thus helps us perform tasks where careful attention is required to produce a right or wrong answer. . . .
Through associations with the sky, the ocean and water, most people associate blue with openness, peace and tranquility, The benign cues make people feel safe about being creative and exploratory.
While I do not doubt there is a learned component to our response to color, is there no innate disposition, is it not somehow easier to associate red with danger, blue with ease? I wonder if any cross-cultural research has been conducted on response to color. That could help determine if humans are predisposed, to some degree and in some fashion, to respond to certain colors.
An interesting finding, nonetheless. I wonder, should I change the background color of this site to red or blue? And with the attention to detail that red seems to bring, could one claim that those darn skeptics, including moi, are always seeing red?
