There is a whole section of psychology that studies how colors affect people and what responses they can evoke. Certain advertisements may utilize different colors to lure you in, others may use colors to get their message across. They may use red to show power or anger, or they may use yellow to show happiness. This makes me wonder if certain colors can have a positive effect on students.

Amy Morin, a columnist for Forbes, questioned whether colors can have an influence on people in the workplace in this article. She interviewed Sally Augustin, Ph.D., to learn about the psychology of color. Augustin claims that color can change a person’s perception of temperature or evoke emotional responses as I said before. If a room is painted with warm colors, people may convince themselves that the room is a few degrees warmer or vice versa. As far as the emotional responses go, she claims there “aren’t always universal truths about color… Despite exceptions, there are basic generalities”. These exceptions may be a past experience that people associate with a certain color. I will always associate bright orange with my high school and how my soccer team looked like carrots in our uniforms. I’m sure all of you have a certain color that you associate with things, both positively and negatively.

Augustin goes on to describe the various affects colors have on people. Green sparks creativity because people associate it with growth, blue is a widely accepted color because its familiar, yellow has a low acceptance, orange is often associated with good value, pink calms people, and white is sleek and clean, but can cause people to lose interest. While we may have already heard of some of these effects, she draws an interesting point on the color red and how it could affect students.

She states that when people see red their reactions become “faster and more forceful”, but that energy is short-lived causing a reduction in analytical thinking. She cited a study by Andrew Elliot, which can be found here, that showed that students did poorly on a test after being exposed to the color red. The research shows that red may help in trying to find a man, but not to concentrate on a test. So ladies, save the red lipstick for the weekends and not your 8 A.Ms.

As we think back to our years in grade school up until now in a college environment, there have been a variety of classroom colors. While most rooms are painted white or very  light plain colors, grade school teachers are likely to cover the walls with bright posters and decorations. I’m sure we all noticed that as we got older, the amount of posters may have decreased and the rooms became more bland. However, there are still plenty of those fun teachers that still spice up their rooms. In college, however, it seems like most of the rooms are plain and simple, probably due to the fact that the professors move rooms constantly and don’t have a claim on any particular one. However, Penn State might want to look into the psychology of color because Augustin reported that white causes people to lose focus. Whether we agree with this or not, there are a number of other variables that go into how well a person does in school, but nonetheless, the psychology of color is an interesting thing.