Seeing red: The effect of colour priming on detail-oriented performance in achievement contexts

Abstract

Research concerning the effect of the colour red on performance in achievement contexts is still in an ambiguous state. Most notably, experiments have largely only been conducted in an artificial environment, so that there is only a small number of experiments that have attempted to test the implications of red on people’s attention in a real-world environment. The laboratory experiments that have been conducted so far were mainly aimed at resolving the question whether the exposure to red triggered an avoidance motivation which would either prompt study participants to perform better in cognitive tasks or which would, to the contrary, constrain their actual attainment during achievement-oriented situations. The study at hand tries to make a small contribution to the findings of preceding research by applying its theoretical framework to the educational domain and by examining the issue in a further field experiment. Hence, 36 students were asked to learn 18 English words and their respective German translations within two minutes. While the experimental group was exposed to a red prime during vocabulary acquisition, the control group learned the words from a piece of paper that carried a neutral (black) prime. The impact of colour priming was measured by evaluating the students’ performance on a subsequent vocabulary test. The present study did, however, not succeed in establishing a relationship between colours and behaviour in achievement contexts. The collected data did not reach significance which could be attributed to several external incongruities. These are discussed in the light of future undertakings that may want to further research the effect of colour priming in the school context and presents suggestions for forthcoming experimenters on how to improve the employed study design.