Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances

By R. Mehta, R. Zhu. Science, 2009

667 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sensory Systems, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f849e2310622dec91fe364f92b034cd8d1cfe6bf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Fred Paas
2. J. V. van Merriënboer
3. Markus A. Maier
4. H. Choi
5. A. Elliot
6. Paul T. Sowden
7. Meng Zhu
8. L. Dannenberg

In Sensory Systems

1. Markus A. Maier
2. Amar Cheema
3. A. Elliot
4. Jens Förster
5. Rajesh Bagchi
6. Paul T. Sowden
7. Chrishelle Redlich
8. C. Lewis

In Social Psychology

1. Markus A. Maier
2. A. Elliot
3. Meng Zhu
4. Paul T. Sowden
5. Amar Cheema
6. Rajesh Bagchi
7. L. Dannenberg
8. J. V. van Merriënboer

Citations in the corpus

• The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory (2014, background): “For instance, the creative thinking literature suggests that cues to environmental safety such as mood state or colour can influence the use of different thinking processes (De Dreu et al., 2008; Mehta & Zhu, 2009; Sowden & Dawson, 2011).”
• GLOMOsys: A Systems Account of Global Versus Local Processing (2010, background): “Likewise, research by Mehta and Zhu (2009) showed that blue is related to approach behavior and broadens both perceptual and conceptual attention.”
• The Effect of Red Background Color on Willingness-to-Pay: The Moderating Role of Selling Mechanism (2013, methodology): “Mehta and Zhu (2009) show that while red enhances performance on detailed tasks, blue helps performance on creative tasks (Hatta et al. 2002).”
• The Impact of Package Color and the Nutrition Content Labels on the Perception of Food Healthiness and Purchase Intention (2016, background): “…of semantic meaning, blue is thought to be associated with trust, efficiency, duty, and logic (e.g., Hanss, Böhm, & Pfister, 2012; Labrecque & Milne, 2012; Mehta & Zhu, 2009), whereas the color red is more complex and can be linked to both negative and positive information depending on the context.”
• Effects of the Physical Environment on Cognitive Load and Learning: Towards a New Model of Cognitive Load (2014, background): “In this regards, Mehta and Zhu (2009) also mentioned that the effect of the same color on the cognitive task may have different associations across cultures (e.g., red is associated with happiness in China, but with excitement and danger in the USA).”
• A Review of Psychological Literature on the Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Biophilic Design (2015, background): “This could be explained by research on colour and creativity, where red has been found to be beneficial on tasks that require concentrated attention [32].”
• Improvisation facilitates divergent thinking and creativity: Realizing a benefit of primary school arts education (2015, methodology): “To measure overall creativity, we adapted the Product Design Task reported in Mehta and Zhu (2009).”