Table 1.
Effects of red color on cognitive performance in early (2007–2010) and most recent studies (2015–2018)
| Study | Cognitive test | Colors | N | Cohen’s d | SEd | pd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early studies | ||||||
| Elliot et al. (2007) | ||||||
| Experiment 1 | Anagrams | 3 | 71 | -0.14 | 0.27 | .60 |
| Experiment 2 | Verbal reasoning | 3 | 46 | -1.11 | 0.35 | < .001 |
| Experiment 3 | Verbal reasoning | 3 | 30 | -1.14 | 0.43 | .01 |
| Experiment 4 | Numeric reasoning | 3 | 57 | -0.51 | 0.29 | .08 |
| Maier et al. (2008) | ||||||
| Experiment 1 | Numeric reasoning | 2 | 20 | -1.37 | 0.50 | .01 |
| Experiment 3 | Numeric reasoning | 2 | 22 | -0.96 | 0.45 | .03 |
| Gnambs et al. (2010)a | ||||||
| Experiment 1 | General knowledge | 2 | 40 | -0.93 | 0.33 | .01 |
| Experiment 2 | General knowledge | 2 | 64 | -0.67 | 0.26 | .01 |
| Recent studies | ||||||
| Larsson & von Stumm (2015) | Verbal reasoning | 2 | 187 | -0.04b | 0.12 | .72 |
| General knowledge | 2 | 187 | -0.01b | 0.13 | .95 | |
| Arthur et al. (2016) | ||||||
| Experiment 1 | Knowledge test | 2 | 76 | 0.43 | 0.23 | .06 |
| Experiment 2 | Knowledge test | 2 | 164 | 0.02 | 0.16 | .89 |
| Experiment 3 | Knowledge test | 2 | 87 | 0.08 | 0.21 | .69 |
| Steel et al. (2018) | Anagrams | 3 | 421 | -0.04 | 0.10 | .68 |
Note. The earliest and most recent studies for each cognitive test are presented (all effect sizes are available in Supplementary Online Material, Section B)
Colors number of color conditions, N total sample size, d average effect size across different color conditions with negative effects indicating worse performance for red as compared to a control color, SEd standard error for d, pd p-value for d
aMale subsample
bAveraged across multiple measures