The Psychology of Color | Riley Johnson | TEDxLosOsosHighSchool

Transcriber: Nada Qanbar Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner It took me a long time to figure out a funny, creative way to start my talk - months, as a matter of fact. And I've come up with nothing, so let's just start. Colors!

Probably not a very exciting topic to most of you, if any of you at all. Nevertheless, they're everywhere and affect our visuals and perceptions. Concerning the topic of colors, there are a few things I could talk about.

I could talk about color theory, how certain color combinations are used to achieve certain effects in arts. I could talk about color associations, what we associate certain colors with, which can vary from country and country and culture to culture. But today I'm here to talk about color psychology, the study of hues as detriments to human behavior.

Now, I know color psychology already sounds mildly fishy. I mean, how could something as simple as just color really affect us that much? Well, the color orange makes you more hungry, whereas the color blue is an appetite suppressant.

The color pink has been found to calm violent prisoners, whereas extreme amounts of the color yellow makes babies cry. And that's only a few ways that colors can affect us. So, I decided to conduct my own little experiment.

I drew three different pictures and, then, made duplicates of each picture where the only thing that changed was the colors in the pictures. The first one, I changed the colors that tinted the entire drawing. The second one, I changed the entire monochrome palette.

And, in the third one, I only changed one of the two colors. I would show each pair of pictures to people and then ask them a question that corresponded with each one. The first pair of pictures, I asked, "Which one looks more appetizing?

" with the assumption that most would pick the warm-colored one, since warm colors trigger your appetite way more than cool colors do. 90% of people picked the warm-colored one. The next pair, I asked, "Which picture looks more calming?

" with the assumption that most people would pick the pink picture since pink has been proven to be a calming color. 70% of people picked the pink one. With the last pair I asked, "Which person feels more threatening?

" with the assumption that most would pick red as red is often processed as danger in our minds. 75% of people picked the red one. So, that's a few examples of how certain colors affect us.

But why do they affect us like this? What's the science behind it? Well, as in to do with all psychology, it's in our brain.

See, light travels in waves, and each color has a different wavelength. These different wavelengths hit our eyes in different ways and are transferred through our eyes as electrical impulses which go to our brain, specifically the hypothalamus - that thing right there. And here's the thing about the hypothalamus: in our body, it affects different functions such as sleep and behavioral patterns, appetite and metabolism, and body temperature, just to name a few things.

So, that's how and why certain colors affect us, but where is this used in life? Well, it's used in a variety of things including advertising, set design and costume design, just things you look at. So, those are kind of the basics of color psychology, but there is one thing that makes studying color psychology really difficult.

And that's the previously mentioned color association. See, what a person associates a color with will obviously affect how they perceive it and react to it. Let me just give you an example.

Usually, the color yellow is seen as a very happy color. That's what most people associate it with. But just picture this for a moment.

A mother is out in her front yard with her child who is playing with a ball. The child drops the ball and follows it into the street. Suddenly, a bright yellow car zooms by and hits the child.

The mother only sees the blur of yellow for a second, but she sees her injured child immediately after. Now, the child survives, but now the mother will forever associate the color yellow with danger and her injured child as opposed to happiness. Nevertheless, color psychology is some food for thought.

Thank you.