As we continue our conversation this month about how to make your tween more creative, one important factor should not be overlooked: color. Whether it’s the hue you paint your son or daughter’s room, the clothes they wear, color has been proven to have a big impact on how individuals realte to their space. OHealthy’s article “Color Can Affect How People Think and Act” explains more. Here’s an excerpt:
“People think blue is always good, regardless of the circumstance, and that’s not always the case,” said Rui (Juliet) Zhu, assistant professor of marketing at the university. “If we were setting the room for a brainstorming session for new product development or coming up with innovative ideas for a gallery or shop, then the blue color will probably help.”
The findings, which appear online Feb. 5 in Science, stem from six separate studies that tested how different hues influence cognitive performance. The researchers looked at whether certain colors made products, such as toothpaste and toys, approachable or evoked avoidance feelings in the participants. They also tested whether color affected memory and information processing, as well as creative versus detail-oriented behavior.
Researchers have long questioned the role that color plays in behavior and performance. A study published last fall in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, for instance, found that red makes men feel more amorous toward women.
“We’ve done a study of these kind of associations, and what we find is that of the terms we looked at, red turns up on top for associations for a number of different things: angry, aggressive, strong, courageous, frustrated and lustful,” said Stephen E. Palmer, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zhu agreed, to a degree. “Because we constantly see red paired with ambulance, blood, emergency, it gets our vigilant attention because we want to avoid these things,” she said. “Blue skies and oceans are open and peaceful things. Therefore, they encourage a more innovative search of strategy.”
But Zhu cautioned that their study looked only at cognitive tasks and that color might play a different role in other settings.
“If we’re talking about physical tasks like sports, red can have very different associations — enthusiasm, success, power, excitement — so I want to be careful not to generalize to other domains,” she said.
“All of our studies were done in North America, so it raises the question whether the same kind of associations, the same kind of effects can be seen in other cultures, so that’s a study that merits future research,” Zhu said. “If it’s a different culture that pairs red with different things, then we’re likely to see a different pattern of results.”
Visit OHealthy to read the entire article.
What color do you surround your tween with? Have you noticed how your tween responds to certain colors? Please share in the comments box below.
Tags: Creativity, onslow memorial hospital, tweens
Our daughter is surrounded by beige and chocolate brown with hot pink. She picked those colors out, however, she tends to want to hang out in my room which is sage or the dining room which is pale blue. She is very creative and spends most of her time out of her room in other rooms except for sleep.