Do Colors Really Warp1 Our Behavior?

Claudia Hammond

我們所生活的世界是五光十色的，色彩可以說(shuō)無(wú)處不在。一直以來(lái)，我們似乎都非常相信顏色會(huì)影響到我們的心情：湖藍(lán)色衣服會(huì)讓人覺(jué)得清涼；肉類調(diào)制成醬紅色會(huì)使人更有食欲；綠色則給人以生命、健康之感。而且現(xiàn)在的生活中，人們?cè)絹?lái)越多地講究色彩與色調(diào)的搭配，比如家居設(shè)計(jì)、服裝搭配等。但是，顏色對(duì)人類行為的影響真的是我們所認(rèn)為的那樣嗎？或許這個(gè)觀念要被顛覆了。

We can spend hours choosing the right paint color for a room to create just the mood we want. We pore over paint charts and bring home tester pots.2. pore over: 注視；paint chart:油漆顏色表；tester: 試用品。Doctors’ surgeries are painted white to give us that sense of clinical cleanliness, fast food shops are red or yellow and some prison cells are painted pink in the hope of reducing aggression.3. 醫(yī)生的手術(shù)室刷的是白色油漆，給人以病房的潔凈感；快餐店刷的是紅色或者黃色；有些監(jiān)獄則刷成粉色，希望能降低犯人的攻擊性。clinical: 醫(yī)院的，診所的。

We might think we know which colors do what. The idea that red wakes us up or blue calms us down is deeply engrained4. engra in: 使……根深蒂固。in Western culture—to the point that many consider it a fact. But do they really change our behavior in the ways that we assume?

When it comes to scientific research, the results are mixed and at times contested5. contest: 爭(zhēng)辯，對(duì)……提出質(zhì)疑。. Red is the color that gets studied most often and tends to be compared with either blue or green. Some studies have found that people do better on cognitive6. cognitive: 認(rèn)知的。tasks when faced with red rather than blue or green; others show the opposite. The mechanism most often cited is conditioning.7. mechanism: 原理；cite: 引用；conditioning: 條件反射。The idea is that if you repeatedly have a particular experience surrounded by a certain color, then you eventually begin to associate that color with the way you were feeling or behaving. It’s been suggested that a school career spent reading your teacher’s red writing circling your mistakes forever makes you link red with danger and this is underlined by the fact that poisonous fruits are often red.8. 有人提出，上學(xué)期間你會(huì)一直看到老師用紅色筆圈出你的錯(cuò)誤，這段經(jīng)歷會(huì)讓你永遠(yuǎn)把紅色跟危險(xiǎn)聯(lián)系在一起；而且，很多有毒的水果也是紅色的，這是又一力證。underline: 強(qiáng)調(diào)。Blue meanwhile is more likely to be associated with calmer situations like staring at the sea or marveling at9. marvel at: 對(duì)……感到驚奇。a big blue expanse of sky.

Of course there will always be exceptions—the comment from the teacher saying “well done” is also written in red and raspberries are red, but perfectly edible.10. raspberry: 樹(shù)莓；edible: 可食用的。It is true that people do make different associations with different colors, but whether this translates into behaving in a certain way or succeeding at a particular task is a different question.

After so many mixed results in the past, in 2009 researchers at the University of British Columbia tried to clarify the situation once and for all.11. clarify: 闡明；once for all: 一勞永逸地。They sat their participants at computer screens colored blue, red or “neutral” and tested them on various tasks.12. 他們讓實(shí)驗(yàn)參與者們分別對(duì)著藍(lán)色、紅色或者暗色的電腦屏幕，然后給他們不同的任務(wù)進(jìn)行測(cè)試。sit: v. 使……坐下；neutral: （顏色）不鮮艷的。With a red screen people did better on tests of memory and proof-reading13. proof-reading: 校對(duì)。,tasks requiring attention to detail, but when the screen was blue they did better on creative tasks, such as thinking of as many uses as possible for a single brick. The authors speculated that red signaled“avoidance” and so they were more careful, while blue motivated the opposite: an “approach” behavior that encouraged them to be freer with their thinking, resulting in more creativity.14. 該文作者們推測(cè)：紅色標(biāo)志著“避免”，所以參與者們更細(xì)心；而藍(lán)色則相反，它能刺激人們找“路子”的行為，因此參與者們?cè)谒伎紩r(shí)更自由，創(chuàng)造力更強(qiáng)。speculate: 推測(cè)；signal: 標(biāo)志。

However, when another team tried to replicate the anagram part of the study with a larger group of people in 2014,15. replicate: 復(fù)制；anagram: 變位詞（組），指變換或顛倒字母順序而構(gòu)成新詞。the effect of color disappeared. The initial study comprised just 69 people.16. initial: 最初的；comprise: 包含。In this new, bigger study, of 263 volunteers, background color made no difference17. make no difference: 不起作用。.

Clearly, studying the effect of color is much harder than it looks—or maybe colors just don’t have the effect that we expect. Yet we are convinced enough that they do for some prisons in the USA,Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Austria and the UK to paint their cells in a particular shade of pink.18. Switzerland: 瑞士；shade: 色調(diào)。In Switzerland 20% of prisons and police stations have at least one pink cell. It’s a shade I’d call blancmange pink, but its proper name is Baker-Miller pink,19. blancmange: 牛奶凍；Baker-Miller pink: 一種粉色調(diào)，是由白色乳膠漆與紅色半光亮漆混合而成的油漆顏色。after two US Naval officers who first studied the effects of pink walls on prisoners.

Back in 1979 prisoners were shown a blue card or a pink card and then had to try to resist the pressure of the experimenter pushing down on their arms. With the blue card they pushed harder, so was the pink card somehow reducing their aggression? Possibly not. The experimenter knew which card had been shown, so without even realizing it they might have eased up a bit on the pink card. What’s more they had a trial run20. trial run: 試驗(yàn)。,followed by the pink card and finally the blue, so perhaps they were just more practiced when it came to the blue card. Several attempts to replicate these results in better-designed studies have failed. But they did follow up with an experiment conducted in real prison cells which were either white or pink, mixing a pint of red paint with a gallon of white to obtain this lovely shade.21. pint: 品脫（液量或干量單位）；gallon: 加侖（液量單位，英制為4.546升，美制為3.785升）。Once again the order of the colors was the same for everyone, so maybe it was the repainting of the cell that made a difference, rather than its pinkness.

In 2014, Genschow’s team entered a maximum security jail in Switzerland to re-examine the hypothesis.22. maximum security: 最高戒備；hypothesis: 假設(shè)。Their study was far better designed than the research from 30 years ago. Inmates held in detention after breaking prison regulations were randomised to cells either painted pink all over or with grey on the walls and white on the ceiling.23. inmate: 同獄犯人；detention: 拘留；randomise: 使隨機(jī)化。Prison officers were trained to use an aggression scale to assess the prisoners’behavior.24. aggression scale: 攻擊量表；assess:評(píng)估。The results were disappointing for those who have gone to the trouble to paint cells pink. After three days in the either cell prisoner were less aggressive than when they were first brought to cell. The color of the walls made no difference at all.

The authors concede25. concede: 承認(rèn)。that a larger study might have found differences, but if the color only makes a difference for a few people, then authorities need to make a judgement about whether it’s worthwhile. The researchers even suggest that blancmange pink walls might have negative effects if prisoners feel emasculated by having a traditionally feminine color on the walls.26. negative: 消極的；emasculated: 柔弱的，無(wú)力的； feminine: 女性的，柔弱的。

So colors might well have an effect, but so far those effects have been difficult to demonstrate consistently and sometimes don’t seem to exist at all. Better-controlled studies are slowly emerging, but it may be some time before we get a full picture of how color affects us, let alone understand the exact mechanisms through which it happens. For the time being, interior decoration should be, as ever, a mix of personal taste and artistic flair.27. interior decoration: 室內(nèi)裝修；flair:資質(zhì)，鑒別力。