Examining the Effect of Illumination Color on Cognitive Performance

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of color illumination on human behavior, especially cognitive performance. A series of experiments examined the hypothesis proposed by Mehta and Zhu (2009). The hypothesis was that red induced avoidance motivation enhancing the performance of tasks which needed attention to details, while blue induced approach motivation improving the performance in creative tasks. We employed some of the experimental tasks used in their study as well as our original ones. The task performances under red and blue illumination were compared. The results showed that memory performance increased in red condition compared to blue condition. However, the performance in the other cognitive tasks did not show any difference between the two illumination conditions, although subjective evaluation of the illumination colors showed different profiles between them. These results indicate that red illumination possibly enhances attention and/or focusing properties than blue, but that blue does not necessarily enhance performance in creative tasks than red.