Abstract
The colour-in-context theory suggests that our reactions to colour vary depending on the context in which the colour is presented. Our understanding of how colour affects mood in different contexts is not well understood. We used Virtual Reality to explore mood and valence (colour preference) responses to colours in three different contexts: a living room, a hospital waiting room, and an empty cube-shaped room. Our hypothesis was that mood and preference responses to colour would vary depending on the virtual environment in which it was presented. Members of the general public participated in this prospective, within-participant case-crossover experimental study. Participants were randomised to one of the eight clusters, with five different colours presented in each cluster. Forty colours were investigated in total. Participants used a Google Daydream View head-mounted display to view the three virtual room environments, which each appeared ‘painted’ in one of the five different colours. Participants provided mood and valence responses at each exposure. Random effects logistic regression was used to explore responses to the colours in context. A total of 745 people participated. In one cluster, the mood and valence responses were significantly different in response to the same colour(s) in different rooms, indicating that context can impact mood and valence responses to colours. Virtual Reality is a feasible methodology to study colour in context. We found that the context in which a colour is presented can impact mood and valence responses, but this was not consistent across clusters.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the public who participated in this study, and the organisations and volunteers that facilitated the data collection. Thanks to David Brodsky who contributed to the literature review for this study and to Tessa Marshall for assisting with the infographic for this manuscript.
Funding
Taubmans® paints provided seed funding of AUD$30,000 for this project (see conflict of interest statement), which contributed to partial salary support for authors EZ and LC to assist with data acquisition and analysis. Taubmans® did not have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of all authors are articulated in “Author’s contributions” section. JB is funded by an NHMRC Research Fellowship (1154904). The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health acknowledges the support of the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Grant.
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Ruby Lipson-Smith contributed to conceptualisation, data visualisation, writing—original draft preparation, and writing—review and editing; Julie Bernhardt contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, supervision, writing—original draft preparation, and writing—review and editing; Edoardo Zamuner contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, and project administration; Leonid Churilov contributed to conceptualisation, formal analysis, methodology, and writing—review and editing; Nick Busietta and Damian Moratti contributed to conceptualisation, funding acquisition, resources, and software.
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The colours selected for testing in this study were selected by the authors from the Taubmans® 2017 colour range. Seed funding from Taubmans® paints was awarded to Liminal VR, who partnered with the Florey to conduct this research. Taubmans® employees had no role in the design, conduct, analysis or writing up of the study. Liminal VR and the Florey jointly developed the research questions for this study, and Liminal VR contributed the expertise to build the VR system used in the study. NB and DM are currently employed by Liminal VR, and while this research was primarily curiosity driven, their company’s involvement in this research may be positively viewed by some and provide some advantage to Liminal VR. No commercial products were developed as part of this research. All data have been made available in supplementary materials. NB and DM were not involved in the analysis of the data.
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This project received ethical approval from the University of Melbourne, Australia (ID: 1750249.1).
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All participants provided informed consent to participate, as described in “Methods” section of this manuscript.
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ESM 2. A video of the Virtual Reality experiment as experienced by participants. (MOV 83357 kb)
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ESM 6. An infographic summary of the key results of the ‘Exploring colour in context using Virtual Reality’ research study. (PNG 373 kb)
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ESM 7. Missing data for all demographic questions and outcome measures. Participants were asked to provide responses in the VR environment across all colours in all 8 clusters, n = 745. Across all variables, there were 9.86% missing data. (PDF 190 kb)
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Lipson-Smith, R., Bernhardt, J., Zamuner, E. et al. Exploring colour in context using Virtual Reality: Does a room change how you feel?. Virtual Reality 25, 631–645 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00479-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00479-x