colour1
The effect of Colour on Reaction Time Performance
Conducted by Eva Loth, Angela Martin, Rachel Powell, Christine Ruschak and Rebecca Tipper
Introduction
The effects of environmental cues on the processing of information and task performance have received
much attention. The cognitive tuning approach (see Soldat, Sinclair and Mark, 1997, for review)
suggests positive environmental affective cues signal a situation to be benign and hence heuristic or non-
systematic processing strategies to be adequate. In contrast, neutral or negative cues imply that more
systematic, detailed processing is necessary to allow an appropriate response to be made. Th is approach
is supported by Bless, Bohner, Schwarz and Strack (1990): happy subjects were found to be influenced
equally by weak or strong arguments whereas sad subjects were influenced only if an argument was
strong. It was suggested that subjects in a p ositive mood were less likely to elaborate the projected
message for themselves. Ottati, Terkildsen and Hubbard (1997) showed that, under low motivation
conditions, subjects exposed to happy facial displays showed systematic processing under all condition
s. The subjects’ moods were suggested to affect processing style, as proposed by the cognitive tuning
model. However, angry facial displays yielded a processing style between the two extremes. Angry faces
should provoke negative moods and signal a threate ning situation requiring systematic processing more
so than neutral faces. It is possible that the relative ambiguity of the neutral facial displays was more
important in triggering systematic processing than the mood provoked by the faces.
Soldat et al. (1997) examined the effect of different paper colours on the ability to solve complex
problems. It was expected that red would be seen to be a warm, happy colour whereas blue would be
more likely to elicit negative affect. Hence red would lead to heuristic processing and poorer talk
performance whereas blue would cause more appropriate systemati