by Thalma Lobel
Although all the students received the same anagram test, there was one important difference among the groups: the color of the participant number. The key was this: numbers were written at the top of each page. For one group of students, the number was written in red; for another group the number was written in green; for a third group it was written in black. Again, this was the only difference among the three groups. In order to make sure that the students noticed the numbers, they were asked to double-check the number on each page (because, the researcher said, the pages would be separated later). The students were then told to begin the test, which they were given five minutes to complete.
The results were incredible—the subtle red test number had a dramatic effect. Students whose tests had a red number at the top of each page performed significantly worse, solving fewer anagrams than those who had a green or a black participant number.I The experiment had been crafted to control all testing variables except the color of the test number, so there was no reason to expect any inequality in performance. The only explanation is that the students were seeing red.
The research team wanted to verify their findings, so they tested their results in different experimental conditions, changing the type of test and the time of exposure. In the second experiment, conducted in Germany, the researchers manipulated the color of the cover page and not the small number at the top of each page. They also changed the test itself. This time they gave an analogy test featuring questions such as “legs relates to walk like: 1. tongue to mouth, 2. eyes to blink, 3. comb to hair, or 4. nose to face.” (The correct answer, of course, is that you use your legs to walk just as you use your eyes to blink.)
Forty-six students participated in this experiment, and each received a binder with a cover page that contained twenty analogies to be solved in five minutes. The only difference among the groups was the color of the cover page. For one group it was red, for the second group it was green, and for the third group it was white. Because the color this time covered the entire first page, participants were exposed to it for a shorter time (only five seconds before being asked to turn the page) and only before the test (not during the test itself). Yet the results were very similar to those of the first experiment.
Again, those who had received a red cover page performed significantly worse than those with a green or white cover page. No difference was found between those who had green and those who had white cover pages.II The researchers conducted additional studies on a wide range of participants, who took both verbal and mathematical tests. Red consistently had a negative impact on test scores, regardless of the type of test or the identity of the test taker.
But what about the location of the testing? Well, it turns out that it doesn’t matter where you take the test. The negative impact of the color red on performance remained the same regardless of changes in environment. Instead of a lab setting, high school students took the analogy test in their classrooms as part of an “IQ test.” This time, the students were tested in groups rather than one at a time. Still, their performances were remarkably influenced by simple manipulations of color. The color red showed itself to affect performance in virtually every instance, with high school and university students, with verbal and numerical tests, and in laboratories and other settings.
Participants were never aware of being manipulated by the researchers. The participants were even asked to guess the purpose of the study, and not one thought it had anything to do with the influence of color. It seems that the color red simply has a way of bullying its way into the human unconscious.
In further investigations, the researchers measured not how red influenced the students’ performance but rather how it influenced their motivation. They found that seeing red evoked fear of failure and, consequently, avoidance behavior, which means that the more afraid you are of failing, the more you try to avoid taking a test.
Elliot and his coresearchers came up with a creative way of measuring motivation in test taking.4 Imagine two very different scenarios in which you are summoned to your boss’s or superior’s office: one is to get a raise, while the other is to explain why you failed to complete something on time. In both cases, when you get to the boss’s office, the door is closed and you have to knock. In which of these two situations would you see yourself knocking more times? I think you’d agree that everyone is likely to knock more times when expecting good news.
To check out their assumption, researchers invited sixty-seven students to a lab and told them they would be taking one of two tests: analogies or vocabulary. The experimenter provided a sample question from each of the tests, just to convince the students that this was what they would be doing. Then the researcher gave the students white binders, which he asked them to open and to read the name of the test printed on the first page. This was the test they believed they were going to take. The word analogies was printed in black ink on a red- or green-colored rectangle.
After reading the name of the test that they thought they were going to take, participants were asked to go to the next lab—some forty feet away—and take the test. The door to that lab was closed, and there was a Please Knock sign on the door. The students’ knocks were recorded and counted. Those who saw the name of the test on a red background knocked fewer times than those who saw the name of the test on a green background. They were less motivated to take the test because of the color red, which increased their anxiety and fear of failure.
How can something as simple as a color so demonstrably affect performance and motivation? As for many issues in psychology, the answer is complex. Many potential emotional reactions can decrease performance and confidence. Red is associated with danger and can trigger nervousness or anxiety. It can provoke an anxious memory of any academic test that was marked up in red ink or stamped with the big old red rubber F. Such associations would understandably cause nervousness, which could lead to avoidance behavior and lower performance.
The associations between red and danger are learned, but they may be rooted in our evolutionary predispositions. In the distant past, our reactions to certain colors proved adaptive, helping us to survive. Early in our childhood, when we see red stop signs and red traffic lights, for example, we have these tendencies reinforced as we learn to be alert to potential dangers.
The scientific findings about red impeding test performance should be taken seriously, particularly by teachers and educators. Simply by becoming aware of any subtle or subconscious factor that reduces success, including red’s influence, we can begin to help students avoid or reduce its effects. For instance, a few years ago, the state government sent letters to thirty schools in Queensland, Australia, asking teachers not to use red pen to mark students’ work since the color is so aggressive. Significantly, they said the color could harm students’ psyches, which some people thought was over the top. After all, the studies you have just read about did not examine whether red is harmful to children’s mental health. They did show very clearly that red has a negative influence on students’ performance and decreased performance or failure might damage a child’s psyche. It’s simple enough for teachers to write their comments and indicate students’ mistakes on tests, homework, or assignments in black pen or pencil or write them on a separate page in order to help reduce the association children make between the color red and the danger of academic failure.
However, the main conclusions of these studies are not about the color of the correcting pen but about red in the tests themselves. It is clear from these studies that teachers and educators should eliminate red from the test environment. Don’t use red for the cover of the test booklet or write any instructions or numbers in red or use red in the color of the bubbles that appear in the Microsoft program Track Changes. Check your children’s books and assignments to see if they contain a lot of red markings and bring these findings to their teachers’ attention and to the attention of the textbook publishers. In the workplace and in everyday life, avoid writing instructions in red—emp
loyees or colleagues might find them harder to heed. This also holds true for manufacturers who supply instructions to board games as well as technical instructions for how to build a chair you bought in IKEA or how to operate that new food processor. Red is not the right color for any of that, though, of course, it is the perfect universal signal in traffic lights and other signals of caution and danger.
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Red affects us not only in the classroom. Two British researchers conducted a study that showed that martial artists and wrestlers won more often when they were wearing red outfits.5 At first glance, this might seem to contradict the results of the test-taking studies just discussed, but stay with me here. The researchers examined four combat sports: tae kwon do, boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and modern wrestling. In the 2004 Olympic Games, athletes were randomly assigned to wear either red or blue outfits or protective gear, yet for all four types of competitions, athletes who wore red won more fights. In another study, the same researchers investigated the success of English football teams from 1946–47 to 2001 and 2003 and correlated it with the color of their shirts.6 Teams that wore red shirts won more often than those with blue, yellow, orange, or white shirts.
It is possible that an athlete wearing red protective equipment or a red shirt experiences intensified emotions, which influence combat performance in a way dramatically different from the way they affect academic performance? Perhaps complex physical reactions to red—like adrenaline rushes or fight-or-flight responses—enhance wrestling ability but make it more difficult to sit down and focus on a verbal or mathematical test. Red might make you want to kill an equation, but that will do you no good on the test.
So these competition results are actually consistent with the previous test-taking findings. The athlete fighting the red-clad opponent sees the color red—or danger—constantly coming at him. If a subtle red number on a test negatively affects the human subconscious, the red color of a uniform might be much stronger. These data suggest not that the color red enhances the performance of the wearer but rather that it increases anxiety in the opponent and thus hurts his ability to perform. However, it also could be that the person who wears the red outfit feels stronger, while the one facing him feels more vulnerable.
A third plausible interpretation of the results comes from three German researchers who argued that those who wear red win more often in competition not because of the influence of red on either of the athletes, but because of its influence on a third party: the referee.7 They showed forty-two referees videotape excerpts of five male competitors of similar ability performing tae kwon do. In each video, one athlete wore blue protective gear (on both head and torso), and the other wore red protective gear. In two video sequences, the videos were identical, but the uniform colors were reversed using digital graphics. Those who wore blue gear in the first sequence wore red gear in the second sequence, and those who wore red gear in the first sequence wore blue gear in the second sequence. Referees were asked to award points to each competitor after each video clip. Competitors who were dressed in red were awarded more points than those who were dressed in blue. Moreover, once the competitors who originally dressed in blue had their color digitally transformed into red, they were awarded more points. The researchers suggested that these results demonstrate that the color red indeed influences the referee. In reality, it probably influences everyone involved.
If red signals threaten us in certain situations, and as a result evoke avoidance behavior, then it makes sense that this avoidance behavior would interfere with cognitive and creative tasks. Avoidance behavior might have a different influence on simple motor performance, however, so in two more experiments, researchers chose physical activities rather than mental tasks to examine the influence of red.8 In one study, they asked participants to open a small clasp as wide as they could, but, before giving them that task, the researchers gave the participants a white paper with questions regarding their sex and age, and the participant number printed in either red or gray at the top of the page. Participants were asked to read loudly their participant number and then open the clasp. In another experiment, participants had to squeeze a handgrip as hard as they could for as long as the word squeeze appeared on the screen. Squeeze appeared on a red, blue, or green background.
In both experiments, red improved the performance of the subjects. They opened the clasp wider when they saw a red rather than a gray participant number and squeezed the handgrip harder when the instruction was on a red background as opposed to blue or green.
So is red good or bad for our performance? Does it help or does it make it worse? To answer, we have to distinguish between motor performance and cognitive performance as well as between complicated tasks and very simple tasks. In all cases red signals threat and evokes avoidance behavior, and our reaction to this threat is to mobilize energy and use it to avoid the threat. Simple motor actions like gripping or squeezing or jumping are enhanced by this “red alert.” In contrast, more complicated motor behaviors and cognitive tasks are impeded by a “red alert.”
Regardless of the reason behind the impediments that red creates, the fact that it does create problems has direct implications for sports teams, schools, educators, and test designers. The challenge that red presents to performance also extends into the virtual world. Several Romanian and Danish researchers found that in a popular video game genre of combat scenarios called first-person shooter, the red team usually has an advantage over the blue team.9 Since wearing red affects physical performance, on the screen and in real life, sports coaches and video game designers should bear this in mind when choosing the uniforms of their teams or the options for their game play.
But context matters; red is also an extremely potent signal in another arena: sex and sexual behavior.
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I In this experiment, too, the researchers took into consideration the general ability of the participants and made sure that this was not the cause of the differences be-tween the groups.
II The researchers took into consideration the general ability of the participants and made sure that this was not the cause of the differences between the groups.
The Lady in Red: Red and Sexual Attraction
Eilat is a southern Israeli city located on the Red Sea. Its several beautiful beaches include Coral Beach, which is good for snorkeling and scuba diving. Every winter, I accompany my husband, an ophthalmologist, to a medical conference in Eilat. We usually go with another couple, good friends of ours. While our husbands audit lectures, my friend and I get to vacation. The winters in Eilat are warm, but often not warm enough to sit on the beach, so, especially in the afternoon, we go shopping. As the only city in Israel with no value-added tax, Eilat has attracted the trendiest, most elegant designer stores. We tourists and visitors can’t resist the lower prices.
Last January, my friend and I were shopping and saw a red dress we both liked. When we tried it on, it looked really nice on both of us (we believed), and the price was unbeatable. We are good friends and don’t mind having the same dress, so we each bought one. Back in the hotel, we told another friend about the bargains in that store, and she immediately went. But she came back with another dress, a black one, and said: “I tried the red dress and it looked really great on me. But I didn’t buy it. I bought a black dress instead, even though I have lots of black dresses at home and no red ones. But that dress was just too red.”
When I heard that, I started having doubts. I almost went to the store and exchanged my red dress for a black one. Perhaps I should have, because, although I have now had it for several months, I wear it far less often than my other dresses. I don’t wear it on special occasions (it is not an evening dress), but I never wear it to work or to any of my lectures either. What did my other friend mean when she said it was too red? Why would she be more comfortable wearing the same dress in black than she was in red? What is it about this color that made my friend reluctant to buy the dress, even though she thought she looked great
in it? What is it about red that makes some women think it is too much, while others prefer it?
Part of the fun of being a professor is that sometimes I can pretend my graduate classes are small, informal focus groups. When I asked a class what color is related to sex, 90 percent answered “red.” In red-light districts, sex is sold. Eve’s red apple is a symbol of seduction. Valentine cards, symbolizing romantic love, are often red. Red is considered an aphrodisiac, something that increases desire. In the movies, the sexy woman is usually dressed in red, from Marilyn Monroe in Niagara to Jessica Rabbit, iconic in her slinky red dress. In a scene in American Beauty, Lester (Kevin Spacey) dreams of his teenage temptress, Angela (Mena Suvari), lying naked on an enormous bed of red rose petals. The petals fall from the sky as dreamy chimes sound in the background. “It’s the weirdest thing,” Lester says in the voice-over. “I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the past twenty years and I’m just now waking up.” Redness fills the shot.
Now let’s see the scientific proof that red is associated with passion and sexuality. Might we perceive people differently because of the color red? Do individuals consider those who wear red to be more beautiful; are they more attracted to them? In fact, red does all these things. Recently, Andrew Elliot and Daniela Niesta conducted a study to examine whether red really enhances men’s attraction to women.1 In the first experiment, researchers chose a black-and-white photo of the head and upper torso of a young adult woman with brown hair. They then showed the photo to two groups of male students, telling them they were studying first impressions of the opposite sex. The men were asked to look at the photo of the woman for five seconds before answering some questions. All the students saw the same photograph of the same woman for the same amount of time.
