Color as an Environmental Processing Cue: External Affective Cues Can Directly Affect Processing Strategy Without Affecting Mood

Social Cognition, Vol. 15, No.l, 1997, pp. 55-71

ALEXANDER S. SOLDAT AND ROBERT C. SINCLAIR

University of Alberta

MELVIN M. MARKThe Pennsylvania State University

We argue that environmental cues provide affective information that directly

influences processing strategy, with positively valenced (i.e., happy) cues leading to

nonsystematic processing and negatively valenced (i.e., sad) cues leading to system atic processing. Two studies addressed this issue. In Study 1, participants were

exposed to a set of problem solving tasks printed on either red, white, or blue paper and under the condition of either low or high motivation to process. The results

showed that in the low motivation condition the blue and white paper participants outperformed the red paper participants, while in the high motivation condition there were no effects. Further, there were no differences in mood among the groups,

although results from a pilot study indicated that the red paper was perceived as

communicating happiness relative to the blue paper. These results suggest that an

environmental cue, such as color, can directly affect processing strategy in low motivation participants. In Study 2, participants completed both simple and complex problem solving tasks on either red or blue paper. The results of Study 1 were

conceptually replicated. For complex tasks, blue paper led to better performance than did red paper; however, no difference was apparent for simple tasks. In Study 3, participants completed a set of simple problems on either red, white, or blue paper

This research supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada Grant 410 930122 and Social Sciences Research Grant to the second author and

Study 1 served the first author's second year project in partial fulfillment of his Ph.D. under the direction of the second author. We thank Curt Hoffman, Jim Uleman, and three reviewers for their comments previous draft of this manuscript and Jolene Chmilar,

Rema Kanani, Souheil Saab, and Norm Thorns for their assistance in stimulus develop

ment, data collection, and data input.

Address correspondence to Alexander S. Soldat to Robert C. Sinclair, Department of

Psychology, P220 Biological Sciences Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9, CANADA; or, e-mail [email protected] [email protected].

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COLOR AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL

PROCESSING CUE: EXTERNAL AFFECTIVE CUES CAN DIRECTLY AFFECT PROCESSING

STRATEGY WITHOUT AFFECTING MOOD

56 SOLDAT...