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Red - Take a closer look

Buechner, V.L.; Maier, M.A.; Lichtenfeld, S.; Schwarz, S.

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Authors

V.L. Buechner

M.A. Maier

S. Schwarz



Abstract

Color research has shown that red is associated with avoidance of threat (e.g., failure) or approach of reward (e.g., mating) depending on the context in which it is perceived. In the present study we explored one central cognitive process that might be involved in the context dependency of red associations. According to our theory, red is supposed to highlight the relevance (importance) of a goal-related stimulus and correspondingly intensifies the perceivers’ attentional reaction to it. Angry and happy human compared to non-human facial expressions were used as goal-relevant stimuli. The data indicate that the color red leads to enhanced attentional engagement to angry and happy human facial expressions (compared to neutral ones) - the use of non-human facial expressions does not bias attention. The results are discussed with regard to the idea that red induced attentional biases might explain the red-context effects on motivation.

Citation

Buechner, V., Maier, M., Lichtenfeld, S., & Schwarz, S. (2014). Red - Take a closer look. PLoS ONE, 9(9), Article e108111. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108111

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 9, 2014
Online Publication Date Sep 25, 2014
Publication Date Sep 25, 2014
Deposit Date Nov 7, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 9
Article Number e108111
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108111

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Published Journal Article (473 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2014 Buechner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.




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