Color Wars: Does Red or Blue Enhance Performance?

Feb. 5, 2009 — -- For those who think people who worry about color schemes are fussy decorator types, think again. New research has shown that certain colors can inspire caution or creativity in problem solving.

"Everybody has a hunch about how color affects our behavior and cognition," said Juliet Zhu, co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. "But there is not much research done in a scientific manner."

Zhu and co-author Ravi Mehta tested more than 600 participants over one year on a variety of problem-solving tasks, including solving anagrams and memorizing lists of words. The tasks were done against either a red, blue or white (neutral) screen, usually on computers.

When presented with a red background, the participants solved tasks that required attention to detail faster than when presented with a blue background.

Conversely, when presented against a blue background, participants offered superior solutions to problems that required a high degree of creativity, such as building a toy out of small parts or the many ways to use a brick.

Previous research on color and cognition often show conflicting results in which either red or blue is shown to enhance performance on cognitive tasks. Zhu and Mehta's efforts to reconcile that conflict led them to divide the cognitive tasks into those that required attention and those that required creativity.

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Zhu and Mehta's results suggested that a red background enhances performance on detail-oriented tasks and a blue background enhances performance on tasks that require creative thinking. The study appeared today in Science Express.

Mehta, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, said they picked red and blue because they were at opposite ends of the color spectrum, in the warmest and coolest color groups, respectively. But red and blue also have strong meanings, or learned associations, attached to them.