New Insights, Color Preferences

Transparent, translucent, opaque shades
Transparent, translucent, opaque shades
Annette and Stafford enrich our knowledge of how surface colors influence perceived tastes. The duo report that “Picky eating is characterized by a limited intake and avoidance of foods. . . . In the study here, we aimed to examine whether colour influences perception of food in picky eaters. Participants . . . sampled the same snack served in three different coloured (red, blue, white) bowls. Results revealed that both the perceived saltiness and desirability of the snack were influenced by colour in the Picky but not Non-Picky Eaters.
Sibrel and colleagues investigated how color influences perceptions of quantity. They share that “Interpreting colormap visualizations requires determining how dimensions of color in visualizations map onto quantities in data. People have color-based biases that influence their interpretations of colormaps, such as a dark-is-more bias—darker colors map to larger quantities.
Chen and Cabrera set out to better understand how color influences experiences in concert halls using virtual reality depictions of concert halls; select surfaces were one color or another, depending on the test condition. They report that study participants rated “loudness, reverberance, and their visual and auditory preference for multiple virtual reality scenes of a concert hall with various colors and with a music excerpt of various levels of gain and reverberation time.
Judgments affected
In a study with applications beyond the specific research question investigated, Garay, Perez, and Pulga probed responses to color palettes used in paintings. They report that “Most existing literature has ignored the potential effects that color intensity may have on art prices. . . . We examine 1627 paintings executed by the “Big Five” Latin American artists (Rivera, Tamayo, Lam, Matta, and Botero), and sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s between 2003 and 2017, to analyze this impact.
Llinares and colleagues studied how classroom wall color hue influences student performance. They determined via a virtual reality project that “Cold hues improve attention and memory performance. . . . The objective of the present study is to analyse the impact that warm and cold hue coloured classroom walls have on the cognitive attention and memory functions of university students. . . .
Steele and Rash evaluated how use of the color red on dishes influences eating.
Motoki and teammates studied how coffee shop design influences the experiences of people in them.
Information to guide selections