November 29, 2021

November 29, 2021

How Different Colors Can Affect Mood & Information Retention

The world is a colorful place. All the colors of the rainbow can be seen at any given moment in any given place. While color brings a touch of beauty to the world, it also has a strong effect on the psyche. Many people aren’t aware of the impact color can have on everything from behavior to mood to information retention.

While colors often mean different things to different people, there are some universal effects that each color has. For example, the color red is seen as bold and sometimes romantic, while blue is often referred to as a calming and relaxing color. However you see color, there is no denying that it plays more with your mind than you may think. But how does color play a role in psychology, exactly? Let’s find out how different colors can affect mood and information retention.

Psychological effects of color on human behavior
Colors are split up into two spectrums: warm and cool. Red, orange, and yellow fall into the warm color category, whereas blue, purple, and green fall into the cool color category. Each group is said to evoke certain emotions in people subconsciously.

Ever heard the term “seeing red” as a description for someone who was furious? That’s because warm colors are typically associated with feelings of anger and hostility. The same can be said for the phrase “feeling blue” when describing someone who is sad. Cool colors are often associated with calmness, sadness, or indifference.

Each color has its own psychological effects. Aside from red and blue, specific colors and their effects include:

  • Green: The color green is associated with positive feelings of luck, money, or health. However, it can also be associated with envy or jealousy, or physical illness. When it comes to behavior, green can promote feelings of calmness, motivation, and better memory.  
  • Yellow: According to research on the color yellow, some psychological effects associated with it include an increase in energy, increased aggression, and feelings of joy or happiness.
  • Brown: The color brown is often associated with more negative psychological effects because it is a darker color. Those effects could be isolation, loneliness, or sadness. Being heavily surrounded by the color brown could evoke those feelings subconsciously.
  • Orange: Orange is typically associated with positive psychological reactions such as high energy, feelings of happiness, and high brain stimulation.
  • Pink: This color is associated with love and romance, but can also have a calming effect on the brain. Some people have also reported that the color pink makes them feel more creative and in touch with their inner child.

How can color affect feelings and moods?
Simply put, color has the ability to evoke emotions. As mentioned above, those psychological effects are entirely dependent on the color as well as what the person perceiving the color associates it with. While some people may see red as romantic, others may see it as a symbol of anger or power.

Color is so powerful when it comes to feelings and moods that it has even been used in certain forms of therapy to help drive certain emotions. Ancient Egyptian and Chinese cultures used to practice chromotherapy, also known as light therapy or colorology. Today, this type of therapy is used in alternative types of medicine as ways to help alleviate certain ailments.

Modern research surrounding the use of colors to purposely evoke certain psychological reactions has found that it may not be as useful as it was once thought to be, however. This could be because different colors have different meanings depending on who is seeing and experiencing them. It also has a lot to do with the fact that the effects of colors are typically short-lived.

How does color affect information retention?
According to research, color has the ability to increase a person’s ability to retain information because of the way it increases levels of attention. When a certain color is stimulating the brain, a person is more likely to pay better attention. Both the color stimuli as well as the information being learned alongside it will be transferred to permanent memory storage.

This was found in a study that took two groups of people and had them watch multimedia presentations. One was presented with color while the other was presented without it. The participants of the color group were found to display better attention and information retention.

What color helps retain information?
The aforementioned study looked at which colors had the best effect on attention span and information retention, and found that colors in the warm category were the best. Colors such as yellow, red, and orange were all seen to have a greater effect in the group that participated using the colored multimedia presentation, as opposed to colors such as brown and gray that fall into the cool color category.

While color is beautiful to the eye, it can also be effective at helping to evoke certain feelings and emotions and even helping people learn and retain information. The trick to using colors in the right way is knowing what associations a person has with each color and pulling from either the warm or cool category depending on what type of emotion or result you are looking for. Colors are powerful tools that can elicit both good and bad psychological effects.

 

Featured image by Mario Gogh on Unsplash