ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2009
Blue or red? Exploring the effect of color on cognitive task performances.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04749147 (Color Priming and Patient Decision-Making in the Emergency Department), which is not on this map. Cited by 109 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Color Priming and Patient Decision-Making in the Emergency Department: Priming "Threat" in Patients With Low-Risk Chest Pain
Who cites it
109 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Literature Review of Consumers' Cognitive-Affective Needs in Product Design From 1999 to 2019.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2020Pooled it
- Impact of primary percutaneous coronary intervention on ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients: A comprehensive analysis.World journal of experimental medicine · 2024Trial
- Colour correct: the interactive effects of food label nutrition colouring schemes and food category healthiness on health perceptions.Public health nutrition · 2016Trial
- Trial
- Reward-based prioritization and perceptual feature effects on attentional flexibility in working memory.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Long-term effects of urban biophilic art environments on depression and anxiety symptoms: a longitudinal intervention study.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- From signal overload to shared insight: creating and structuring scientific visuals for comprehension and dialogue.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Circadian system functional status and sleep in blind subjects with and without conscious light perception.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Article
- Contextual decoupling in color preference: multimodal evidence from spatial evaluation in makerspaces.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The Influence of Food Colors on Emotional Perception and Consumer Acceptance: A Sensory and Emotional Profiling Approach in Gastronomy.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Social versus nonsocial visual cues of trustworthiness uniquely influence trust related behavior and memory.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Interactive room design as a tool for understanding form and style preferences.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Analysis of the impact of different background colors in VR environments on risk preferences.Cognitive processing · 2025Article
- Research on visual comfort of color matching in space station experiment module.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Oxytocin enhances creativity specifically in approach-motivated individuals.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- A scoping review of visual communication of written patient health information preferences including a Māori perspective.Health education research · 2025Review
- The influence of red and blue font color on intertemporal choice: the mediating roles of time perception and dimensional difference comparison.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Improving the Reliability of the Pavlovian Go/No-Go Task for Computational Psychiatry Research.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Light green background enhances reading performance in visual display terminal tasks.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Brain and Subjective Responses to Indoor Environments Related to Concentration and Creativity.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
49 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Existing research reports inconsistent findings with regard to the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Some research suggests that blue or green leads to better performances than red; other studies record the opposite. Current work reconciles this discrepancy. We demonstrate that red (versus blue) color induces primarily an avoidance (versus approach) motivation (study 1, n = 69) and that red enhances performance on a detail-oriented task, whereas blue enhances performance on a creative task (studies 2 and 3, n = 208 and 118). Further, we replicate these results in the domains of product design (study 4, n = 42) and persuasive message evaluation (study 5, n = 161) and show that these effects occur outside of individuals' consciousness (study 6, n = 68). We also provide process evidence suggesting that the activation of alternative motivations mediates the effect of color on cognitive task performances.
Indexed as
Identifiers
19197022What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.