Trial reportPloS one2019
Red color facilitates the detection of facial anger - But how much?
Trial report in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of psychological research linking colours and emotions.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Pooled it
- The association between emotional arousal and color lightness of facial digital expressions of social robots.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Dynamic versus static facial color changes: Evidence for terminal color dominance in expression recognition.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Article
- Variation in Skin Red and Yellow Undertone: Reliability of Ratings and Relevance for Perceived Social Experiences.Social psychology quarterly · 2024Article
- Facial expressions affect the memory of facial colors.Journal of vision · 2024Article
- Enjoying art: an evolutionary perspective on the esthetic experience from emotion elicitors.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Red background color biases gender categorization of human faces.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Red biases sex categorization of human bodies.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Examining the Impact of Human Face Stimulus on Shape-Contrast Effects during a Brief Presentation.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Red Backgrounds Enhance Dominance in Human Faces and Shapes.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The color red seems to be consistently associated with the concept of anger. Beyond semantic associations, it has been suggested that the color red enhances our ability to perceive anger in faces. However, previous studies often lack proper color control or the results are confounded by the presence of several emotions. Moreover, the magnitude of the (potential) effect of red has not been quantified. To address these caveats, we quantified the effect of facial color and background color on anger with psychometric functions measured with the method-of-constant-stimuli while facial hue or surround hue was varied in CIELAB color space. Stimulus sequences were generated by morphing between neutral and angry faces. For the facial color, the average chromaticity of the faces was shifted by ΔE 12/20 in red, yellow, green and blue directions. For the background color, the hue was either neutral or saturated red, green or blue. Both facial redness and surround redness enhanced perceived anger slightly, by 3-4 morph-%. Other colors did not affect perceived anger. As the magnitude of the enhancement is generally small and the effect is robust only in a small subset of the participants, we question the practical significance of red in anger recognition.
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What 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.