color psychology
This color can improve your brain’s cognitive performance
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Color psychology is an exciting field. There are sounds that calm us down, while others put us on alert. According to some studies, one color in particular has a positive effect on the performance of our brain.
There are colors that we intuitively like better than others. We will then probably buy clothes or accessories in these tones more often or adapt our interior design to them. Some may prefer to surround themselves with warm colors like yellow or delicate natural tones, while others prefer cooler nuances like blue. But what does it do to us if we have a color around us frequently? Science has been dealing with this in the context of color psychology for many years.
Because certain shades of color not only affect our mood, they also affect our productivity and performance. Shades of blue, for example, are said to activate our brain. Is there really something to it?
Studies confirm: Blue increases our performance
Indeed, because one study from Harvard Medical School and the University of Arizona were able to prove that blue light increases performance. According to the research team, this is probably due to the photoreceptor system in our brain. This is linked to the circadian rhythm, i.e. our natural sleep-wake cycle. Our brain associates daylight and brightness with the color blue – just think of a bright blue sky. This connection activates our brain so that it can optimize its resources and increase its performance.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada have another study conducted on the topic. To do this, they compared the effects of the colors red and blue. Juliet Zhu, one of the study authors, explains: “Previous research suggested that blue and red improve the cognitive performance of the brain.” So far, there has been disagreement as to which color has the greater effect.
The result of the study suggests that there really is a difference in the effect of the two colors. Red seems to be particularly effective at improving performance on very detail-oriented tasks, such as memory or things like proofreading texts. Blue, on the other hand, stimulates our brain to become more creative. This ensures better results when it comes to brainstorming or developing new solutions.
The color blue obviously makes you more creative
That makes sense – after all, we associate the color red with things like stop signs or teachers’ correction pens. It therefore puts us on the alert first of all, we concentrate particularly hard. We associate blue with the sea or the vastness of the sky. While these positive images also stimulate our brain, it is relaxed enough to be creative.
So if you want to access the full creative capacity of your brain – for example because he or she is working on a new project – the color blue can not only help to motivate you, but also improve cognitive performance.
Conversely, you should be careful with blue light, for example, when going to bed. It is not for nothing that most smartphones can offer the function of dimming or filtering out the blue light in the evening and at night. Because before we go to sleep, our brain should slowly go into sleep mode so that it can regenerate over the course of the night.
Sources used: sciencedaily.com, gedankenwelt.de