In a clever series of experiments, Ravi Mehta and Rui Zhu from the University of British Columbia found that red makes people averse to risks, more vigilant and more attentive to detail. Blue hues, on the other hand, encourage them to explore and try new things, and boosts creative thinking.
In the study, published online Thursday in Science magazine, researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with 600 people to see how cognitive performance varies when people see red or blue.

In both studies, the central idea is that exposure to one color or the other primes a person's brain with certain motivations, which bias their response times or their preferences in the later assignment. Next, Mehta and Zhu showed that these biases actually affect people's abilities at different sorts of tasks.

Zhu and co-author Ravi Mehta tested the participants over one year on a variety of problem-solving tasks, including solving anagrams and memorizing lists of words. The tasks were done against either a red, blue or white (neutral) screen, usually on computers.

"Think about red, and what comes to mind: stop lights, stop signs, danger, ambulances," said  Zhu. "People want to avoid those things, and that's why they do better on detail-oriented tasks." On the other hand, "Blue is the color of the sky, the ocean, safety," she said. "When their environment is safe, people are more explorative."

State University of New York at Albany psychologist Ronald Friedman, co-author of a study that found red-linked drops on IQ tests, called the findings "quite remarkable." Stony Brook University psychologist Markus Meier, also a co-author on Friedman's study, called Zhu's study "a great paper," one that underscores the unappreciated importance of color.