March 19,
2007
Findings show seeing the color red can hurt academic
performance
Avoid the color red before the big test. That’s
according to the latest findings by Andrew Elliot (right), professor of
psychology, and graduate students Arlen Moller and Ron Friedman (not
pictured).
Color associations are so strong and embedded so deeply
that people are predisposed to certain reactions, especially when they see
the color red. For test takers, red spells failure.
That finding comes from researchers at Rochester and
the University of Munich who have found that even a hint of red before an
important test can affect a person’s academic performance to a
significant degree. The study results appeared in the February issue of the
Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General.
Andrew Elliot, lead author and professor of psychology,
explains that color “clearly has aesthetic value, but it can also
carry specific meaning and convey specific information.” The
researchers’ work illustrates that color acts as a subtle
environmental cue that has important influences on behavior.
Maybe more than most colors, red has definite
associations. It is the color linked to danger, failure, and stop signs.
The highest level of terror alerts in the United States, for examples, are
indicated by red.
In the researchers’ work, four experiments
demonstrated that the brief perception of red prior to an important
test—such as an IQ test or a major exam—actually impaired
performance. Two further experiments also established the link between red
and avoidance motivation when task choice and psycho-physiological measures
were applied.
The findings show that “care must be taken in how
red is used in achievement contexts,” the researchers reported.
Elliot and his colleagues didn’t use just any
color of red. They assessed the colors using guidelines for hue,
saturation, and brightness, and purchased a high-quality printer and a
spectrophotometer for this project. Elliot also gained advice from
researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology on how the eye responds to
color. He was stunned to learn that results from earlier work on color by
psychologists didn’t control for saturation and brightness.
The article’s hypothesis is based on the notion
that color can evoke motivation and have an effect without the
subjects being aware of it. “It leads people to do worse without
their knowledge” in the realm of academic achievement, says Elliot.
In one of the six tests given, for example, people were allowed a
choice of questions to answer. Most chose to answer the easiest
question, a classic example of how to avoid failure.
Coauthors of the article, which is published by the
American Psychological Association, are Arlen Moller and Ron Friedman,
graduate students in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in
Psychology, and Markus Maier and Jörg Meinhardt at the University of
Munich. The work was funded by a grant from the William T. Grant
Foundation, and a Friedrich Wilhelm Bassel Award from the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation to Andrew Elliot.
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