Abstract
In their 2015 paper, Thorstenson, Pazda, and Elliot offered evidence from two experiments that perception of colors on the blue-yellow axis was impaired if the participants had watched a sad movie clip, compared to participants who watched clips designed to induce a happy or neutral mood. Subsequently, these authors retracted their article, citing a mistake in their statistical analyses and a problem with the data in one of their experiments. Here, we discuss a number of other methodological problems with Thorstenson et al.'s experimental design, and also demonstrate that the problems with the data go beyond what these authors reported. We conclude that repeating one of the two experiments, with the minor revisions proposed by Thorstenson et al., will not be sufficient to address the problems with this work.
Highlights
Based on two experiments, Thorstenson et al (2015a) claimed that a state of sadness—induced by watching a short film clip—impairs performance on a specific perceptual task: discrimination of colors along the blue–yellow axis, but not the red–green axis. This conclusion is interesting because it is specific to a single dimension of color space; poor performance on tasks generally, or low willingness to cooperate with an experimenter, would not be a surprising effect of sadness
In their retraction notice (Thorstenson et al, 2015b), the authors acknowledged that their data did not justify their conclusion that impairment was specific to one aspect of color space
It was apparently considered sufficient to randomize the participants to watch one of two film clips; presumably the reasoning was that this randomization made it unlikely that the two groups differed much in baseline performance. Even if this assumption were to be confirmed, the two groups would likely differ somewhat at baseline, even if by only a small amount, and such a difference could have an effect on the outcome given the relatively small sample sizes involved (Saint-Mont, 2015). It would have been useful for these differences to be measured and included in the subsequent analyses, given that Thorstenson et al.’s hypothesis was that sadness would “impair” participants’ color perception
Summary
Based on two experiments, Thorstenson et al (2015a) claimed that a state of sadness—induced by watching a short film clip—impairs performance on a specific perceptual task: discrimination of colors along the blue–yellow axis, but not the red–green axis. Signal detection theory, which was not used, would be necessary to show whether the decrease in accuracy found was due to an impairment in color perception (i.e., a decline in sensitivity along the blue–yellow axis), or whether the judgments of the sadness group were instead biased away from blue and yellow.
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