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Can Color Affect Your Mood and Behavior?
Modern Research on Color Psychology
Most psychologists view color therapy with skepticism and point out that the supposed effects of color are often grossly exaggerated. Also, one’s feelings about color are often deeply personal and rooted in their own experience or culture.
Much of the evidence in this emerging area is anecdotal at best, so more scientific research is needed to gain a better understanding of color psychology.
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"Given the prevalence of color, one would expect color psychology to be a well-developed area. Surprisingly, little theoretical or empirical work has been conducted to date on color's influence ...
"Given the prevalence of color, one would expect color psychology to be a well-developed area. Surprisingly, little theoretical or empirical work has been conducted to date on color's influence on psychological functioning, and the work that has been done has been driven mostly by practical concerns, not scientific rigor."
Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier, researchers.
The Psychological Effects of Color
While most perceptions of color are subjective, some color effects have universal meaning.
- Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm colors and include red, orange, and yellow. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility.
- Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple, and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference.
Color Usage In Chromotherapy
- Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.
- Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.
- Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels.
- Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain.
- Indigo shades were thought to alleviate skin problems.
Modern Research on Color Psychology
Most psychologists view color therapy with skepticism and point out that the supposed effects of color are often grossly exaggerated. Also, one’s feelings about color are often deeply personal and rooted in their own experience or culture.
Much of the evidence in this emerging area is anecdotal at best, so more scientific research is needed to gain a better understanding of color psychology.
Research Findings On Color Effect
- The mood-altering effects of color may only be temporary.
- Warm-colored placebo pills may be more effective than cool-colored placebo pills.
- Installing blue-colored streetlights can lead to reduced crime in those areas.
- Red causes people to react with greater speed and force, something that might prove useful during athletic activities.
- Sports teams dressed in mostly black uniforms are more likely to receive penalties and that students were more likely to associate negative qualities with a player wearing a black uniform.
- Seeing the color red before taking an exam may hurt test performance.
- Certain colors have been associated with increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and eyestrain.
Color Preferences
Color preferences can sometimes make a statement about how we want other people to perceive us. Other factors such as age and gender can also influence the color choices we make.
The personality of the buyer can play an important role in color selection, but buyers are often heavily influenced by factors such as price and other practical concerns.
Meanings Of Colors
- White: can feel fresh and clean. Often used to evoke a sense of youth and modernity.
- Black: often associated with sexy, powerful, mysterious, and even ominous feelings.
- Silver: linked to a sense of innovation and modernity.
- Red: a bold, attention-getting color that can transmit an image of power, action, and confidence.
- Blue: linked to stability and safety.
- Yellow: may mean that you are a happy person in general and perhaps a bit more willing than the average person to take risks.
- Gray: may mean subtlety and that you don't want to stand out.
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Meaning of White
New beginnings, lightness, perfection, purity, peace, innocence, neutrality, impartiality etc. In hospitals, white is a predominant color, it is aseptic and conveys calm.
It is an immaculate ...
Meaning of Yellow
Positive concepts like optimism, youth, confidence, and creativity.
However, yellow is a contradictory color. It is also related to betrayal, greed, lies, insanity, warnings or socially rejected groups.
Meaning of Orange
The orange color immediately captures the attention of the person staring.
According to color psychology, orange represents extravagance, energy, transformation, and uniqueness.
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Color Suggestions
- Desktop: Green, as it is the bit is restful for eyes and produces the least amount of eyestrain.
- Work Out Clothes: Orange, the color of stimulation and enthusiasm.
- Women’s Dating Clothing: Red, the color of passion and gets blood pumping.
- Men’s Dating Clothing: Blue to communicate stability and calmness.
- To Look Aggressive: Black, as research correlates it with higher levels of aggression on sports teams that use it.
- Office Walls: Blue and Green. Blue can lower heart rates and green reduces anxiety and is associated with money.
- Work Clothing: Not grey, as it inspires people to be passive, uninvolved and have a lack of energy.
Research And Color
Research says colors can absolutely affect your mood, behavior and stress levels. It also claims there are generalities that can be gleaned from decades of research on the patterns of what people think about each color but no absolute truth.
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The Psychology Of Color: Research Findings
- Up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be based on color alone (depending on the product).
- Colors influence how consumers view the "personality" of the brand in question.
The Psychology Of Color - Misconceptions
Elements such as personal preference, experiences, upbringing, cultural differences, context, etc., often muddy the effect individual colors have on us. So assertions on the effect of colors are often not based on scientifically sound evidence.
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Your workspace matters
Lighting
- The best kind of light you can have in your office is natural light. It helps our bodies maintain our internal "clocks" or circadian rhythms which affects our sleep and energy.
- Poor lighting, whether it's dim lighting or harsh lighting from overhead fluorescent lights, can cause eye strain, stress, and fatigue.
- Don't sit with your back to a window unless you can shade it.
- Don't sit facing a window because that will make reading a monitor difficult.
- If you use a task lamp at your desk, position it so the bottom of the lampshade is at about the height of your chin when it's on.
Plants
- Indoor plants prevent fatigue during attention-demanding work.
- Even just having a window view of live greenery can be restorative and keep us focused.
- A peace lily plant requires little sunlight to survive and you only have to water it when the soil is dried out and is also great for cleaning the air.
- Cacti and aloe plants are other low-maintenance plants to consider.
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Human Emotions
An emotion is an objective state that exhibits itself in many ways like behavior, facial expression, heart rate, blood pressure, and stress-hormone levels. Broadly speaking, we kn...
New Kinds of Emotions
- Mix N match Emotions: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a newly coined mix of envy, fear, and sadness.
- Social Emotions: Feelings like guilt, shame and embarrassment are social emotions, and can even be found in dogs.
- Fear: Emotions like fear and anxiety are hard to pinpoint in the brain's geographical area, due to the presence of multiple fear circuits.
If our emotions are constructed by our minds, it means they can also be de-constructed or even reconstructed.
Labelling Emotions
The brain loves to identify, tag, or label all the feelings and emotions that are being experienced.
New studies show that changing the name of the emotion can change the feeling that is produced by hearing that emotion, and the brain may be able to create or make up emotions that don't have a label yet.
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Create a To-Do List
- Sync your to-do list with your mobile phone.
- Write down the three most important tasks.
- Keep to an easy and workable task list.
Do one thing at a time.
Simplify
Organizing unnecessary items is wasting energy.
- Have less stuff.
- Eliminate outdated articles to read “someday."
- Find an appropriate place for everything and make sure it is easily accessible.
- Choose one tool and stick with it.
- Pack tools immediately after use.
Embrace Change
It eliminates methods and ideas that no longer work and promotes the more important things.
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Ego Depletion
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Ego depletion happens when people use up their available willpower on one task.
We all have natural urges, desires, and tendencies that demand attention. When we curb those ...
Self Control
People having a high level of self-control experience better relationships and have higher achievement levels. Lack of self-control is associated with social conflict and low-grade academic performance.
Example: While following a diet regime, a person spends a lot of willpower the whole day trying to avoid junk food, but by the end of the day, all his mental energy has been exhausted, and there is no self-control left, resulting in snacking on unhealthy food.
Causes of Ego Depletion
Many emotional and physical factors contribute to ego depletion, like:
- Emotional distress
- Struggling to learn something new
- Mental fatigue due to anxiety
- Low levels of blood sugar
- Too much choice
- Conflicting beliefs and actions (cognitive dissonance)
- Heart Rate
- Hormonal imbalance
- Being young and immature.
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Effects of music on productivity
- Listening to music with lyrics is distracting for most people. It’s best to avoid it when working on tasks that require focus or the learning of new information.
- Listening to
Music and the brain
Music has a real impact on human emotions and perception. Music activates different areas of the brain in different people, but there are general brain and mood patterns revealed by music research.
For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks.
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Performances In Isolation
The world is used to seeing people performing in the iconic public streets and podiums all across the planet, it is a strange sight now, with near-total emptiness and silence as ‘Quaranti...