Cognitive Performance and the Impact of Colors on Human Memory

Many research studies were conducted on cognitive performance and the impact of colors on human memory. Obviously, colors do surround each of us and they have the immediate impact on the nervous system and cognitive performance in humans. However, the idea of the direct effects of color on human is not further developed in research. The field concerns itself with the effect of color on memory performance because there are many conflicting results such as in some studies red impact people’s cognitive performance and others didn’t find any impact (Mehta & Zhu, 2009).

Humans are trained to associate colors in society such as seeing a red traffic light, mistakes on paperwork, and failure on cognitive tests. The color red carries many negative connotations and meanings. It may resemble strength, courage, war, danger, and caution. The study was conducted by Elliot and colleagues (2007) to test the hypothesis that color red may have a hidden psychological impact on people and their performance. They found that the color red impaired participants’ performance on the IQ test because it is associated with errors. However, the same color can have a different impact on different people, depending on the situation and context (Elliot, et.al. 2007).

The researchers argued that the color associations are so strong that even a small and short-term exposure of red can have a negative influence and dramatically reduce the estimates obtained with the computer based test during a free recall memory (Mehta, et. al., 2009). Blue is completely opposite because almost all humans tend to associate blue as positive because it associates with the sky, ocean, and a sense of peace. These associations do confirm his encouragement and calming effect (Mehta, ...

... middle of paper ...

...two hypotheses related to the effect of color background on the memory performance, and to determine if ethnicity would perceive color differently. The first hypothesis was that participants would perform better on the red and blue colors as opposed to the black/white background. Those colors were used based on the result from Metha (2009) who found that participants made less false errors on red condition than blue it was predicted that subjects would recall less incorrect words on red background and more incorrect words on blue and black/white. The second hypothesis focused on ethnicities (White vs. Minority) arguing that Caucasians would perform well with the color red and blue, and minority groups (Asian, African American, Spanish/Latino, Multicultural, and Pacific Islander) would perform well in black/white backgrounds because of the color preferences (cite).