URGENT Redo Of Lab Report

URGENT Redo Of Lab Report

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Effect Of Colour On Perception And Psychological Functioning

Abstract

Empirical studies have shown that the functional aspects of colour should be emphasized to help facilitate learning, rather than focusing on the aesthetics of colour (Gaines & Curry, 2011). This is not limited to the walls of the class room but also includes the influence of colour of paper to aid in learning. Researchers and educators are interested in improving the methods of learning that might help in students’ better understanding of subjects, and improvement of memory retention.

98 students from James Cook University participated in a study using various colour papers: pink, green, and white. The focus of this study is to examine the impact of colour on perception. The mean number of correct answers recorded by each condition group was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the various colour paper on learning. The review of the findings suggests that students who did the test on green paper performed slightly better than the students with white or pink paper. Thus, it is concluded that green is the more effective colour paper for learning.

Keywords: learning, colour, performance

Effect of Colour on Perception and Psychological Functioning

Colour plays a fundamental role in human perception (Mehta & Zhu, 2007). Learned associations help derive the meaning of colours such as the colour red with danger, and allows the communication of specific information that suggest a biological inclination response to certain colours (Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman & Meinhardt, 2007).

It is presumed that various colours have different associations, and psychological responses consistent with those associations may be stimulated by looking at those colours. Previous studies have suggested that specific colours can invoke different emotions, elicit various responses, and improve students’ academic performances (Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman & Meinhardt, 2007).

White and off-white environments were reported by Gaines and Curry (2011) to be less productive. In addition, Mehta and Zhu (2007) claimed that performance on detailed-oriented and creative tasks were affected by the colours red and blue, with high implications for test preparation and testing formats. While pink has a tranquilizing effect (Morton, 1998) and may suppress aggressive behaviour in prisoners (Walker, 1991), the colour blue enhances creativity.

Though commonly stated as fact in various scientific literature that short wavelength colours are calming, and long wavelength colours are arousing, the actual data does not support the claims (Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman & Meinhardt, 2007). However, several studies have shown that students scored higher on blue than red paper (Sinclair, Soldat & Mark, 1998). These researchers suggested that the colour red stimulates a processing strategy that conserves cognitive resources which induces positive affect. On the other hand, they suggested that the colour blue stimulates detail-oriented processing that might be more effective when solving difficult problems, inducing negative affect. In contrast to these findings, Skinner (2004) reported that students scored higher marks on exams printed on red than on blue paper, with the highest scores achieved on white paper.

Several limitations might be responsible to explain the difference in results between these two findings. Firstly, many studies failed to follow basic experimental procedures such as experimenter blindness to hypothesis. Secondly, there were many uncontrolled manipulations e.g., presenting colour on a class wall for 4 days. Lastly, even though other colour attributes such as hue, lightness, and chroma can influence psychological functioning, limited existing research has examined their effects (Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman & Meinhardt, 2007).

The focus of this study was to investigate whether colour has an impact on perception in student performance. Students were presented ten multiple-choice questions (MCQs) based on Piaget’s theory on cognitive development. Our hypothesis in this experiment is that the cooler colour (green) group will perform better than other condition groups.

Method

Participants

98 James Cook University psychology undergraduates (37 male, 61 female) participated in this study. The age range of participants was from 17 – 47 years old (refer to Table 1 for demographics). They were randomly assigned to pink, green or white coloured MCQ question sheets during the first week of tutorials.

Table 1