Hack your brain with colors

Colour Psychology is not that well developed, but there is increasing scientific evidence about how colours affect our brains. Calm down, gear up, get creative or solve problems by finding the right colour.



Time: A few seconds to expose yourself to a colour and a few minutes for it to start to take affect.

Materials
Red
Green
Blue
White
Yellow
Orange
Brown
Pink

Method
*Red makes you perform better

We all know that red cars go faster (and red underwear comes off faster), however there is some truth behind this myth. Looking at the colour red will make you perform better on both physical and mental tasks.



*Green makes you more creative and is healing

Maybe the hippies and greenies are onto something. Looking at the colour green makes us more creative. So if you want a creative office buy lots of pot plants and if you want to be creative walk in the park or just hang a green poster behind your desk.



Green is also a calming and healing colour. A study found that people who worked in a green coloured office had fewer stomach aches than those who worked in other coloured offices.

*Blue is relaxing and reduces violence

Blue is an interesting colour. It is a calming colour. Blue coloured street lights can even reduce the amount of crime in an area when used. Many places where violence is common have resorted to painting everything blue.



Interestingly, blue also make people more productive over the long-term, as opposed to red's quick gains.

*Warm colours are healing

This will now probably make you think I am a complete hippie, but first listen to the evidence. You know how placebo pills will work even though they don't contain any medicine, it turns out placebo pills that come in warm colours, such as orange, yellow and red, are more effective than cool coloured placebo pills.




So red makes you perform better, so too yellow can increase your metabolism and the colour orange can increase your excitement and enthusiasm about something.

However all three of these colours lead to more anger, negative emotions and violence. So use with caution.


It does depend on the exact shade of pink used, but it can be used for calming. Some prisons have a pink cell that is used as a place to calm down angry inmates. Some sports teams paint their visiting team locker rooms pink to try and make them more passive and perform worse.




White is the colour of purity and cleanliness yet it is also implicitly associated with death, more so than black. However exposing yourself to white, especially sitting in a white room, can clear our mind and focus our thoughts. When faced with a problem, putting a big sheet of white paper in front ourselves has an immediate psychological effect on the brain.



*Brown is weird

Brown can create both feelings of warmth, comfort and security, but also increase feelings of sadness and isolation. The difference may be due to the specific shade of brown, but there hasn't been enough research on this.



*Black is bad news

The colour black has long had negative connotations and this can transfer to your life. For example, sports teams that wear black get more penalties against them than teams wearing other colours. Whether this is because wearing blacks makes you a bad boy, or others just see you that way is uncertain. It may be a combination of both.



Categories
#self_help
#psychology
#life_skills


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