Study Shows Color Red Affects Achievement

Call it color psychology, how certain colors affect our moods, emotions and even behavior. But a research team has recently discovered the color red is so deeply embedded with certain associations, it affects our intellectual performance.

It means stop in traffic and danger. But red is also the color traditionally used in marking mistakes on school papers. Researchers from the Universities of Rochester and Munich found that if people see even just a flash of red before they are tested, it significantly degrades their performance on the test. It seems people automatically associate the color with mistakes and failures so when they see red, they are predisposed to do poorly. "Color clearly has aesthetic value, but it can also carry specific meaning and convey specific information," said one of the researchers. "Our study of avoidance motivation is part and parcel of that." The researchers used six experiments in the study, four of them demonstrated that seeing the color red before an important test or exam impaired performance. Two other experiments demonstrated a link between red and avoidance motivation. A specific example of that came when people were given a choice of which questions they could answer. Most of them elected to answer the easiest question first, demonstrating avoidance motivation or how to avoid failure. The researchers concluded that "care must be taken in how red is used in achievement contexts and illustrate how color can act as a subtle environmental cue that has important influences on behavior." They also noted that the meanings of color varies with context. Change the context and the meaning will change as well.