Abstract
Although red light is often said to be activating and blue light is thought to be relaxing, studies provide no unequivocal evidence for such a claim. There are indications that the effect on arousal evoked by colored light should not be attributed to its hue, but to uncontrolled variations in lightness and saturation instead. Moreover, cognitive processes, such as associations, also play a role. Therefore, not only arousal but also valence should be considered when studying the effect of colored light. In the current study, the effect of hue (red, green and blue), lightness and saturation of colored light on arousal and valence was investigated. Red light was found to be less pleasant and more arousing than green and blue light as measured by subjective evaluations, and as expected, saturated light was assessed to be more arousing than desaturated light. Conversely, no clear psycho-physiological effects were found. In conclusion, a discrepancy between questionnaires and psycho-physiological measurements has occurred in this study; its cause has not been identified yet.
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- 1.
Note that in case suppression of melatonin production is the only mechanism behind the arousing effect of blue light, no arousing effect of blue light should be seen during daytime; melatonin is, after all, only produced at night, and can therefore not be suppressed during day time.
- 2.
The symbol “Δ” is used to indicate the “mean difference ± S.E.M.”.
- 3.
The term “m ” is used to indicate “mean ± S.E.M.”.
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Acknowledgments
The author wants to thank Iris Hanique from the Radboud University Nij-megen, The Netherlands, for her excellent assistance in preparing and performing the experiment, and Gert-Jan de Vries for his excellent support in analyzing the psycho-physiological data. The author also wants to thank Dragan Sekulovski and Ingrid Vogels for their help with selecting the proper light stimuli for this study.
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Rajae-Joordens, R.J.E. (2010). The Effects of Colored Light on Valence and Arousal. In: Westerink, J., Krans, M., Ouwerkerk, M. (eds) Sensing Emotions. Philips Research Book Series, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3258-4_5
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