| Color is a fundamental aspect of human perception, which has important influence on high-level cognitive processing. However, research on the influence of color on creative process is sparse so far. To explore this, three behavioral experiments were designed to investigate whether commonly found colors have effect on creative process.In experiment1, we selected six colors (blue, green, orange, purple, red and yellow) by using HSL scheme, to explore color effects on creative imagery problem solving. The results show a significant color effect on originality. Specifically, purple facilitates creative imagery problem solving. Moreover, green, blue, red, yellow, orange, and purple are orderly increased in facilitating participants to produce more originally. These results, however, are conflicting with the findings of previous studies, demonstrating that blue or green can facilitate creative problem solving. In experiment2, the Remote Associates Test was employed to examine the observed color effects. However, no difference between different color conditions in either the number of correct responses or the reaction time of the correctly responded items was found. The relatively short time for task and/or the smaller area of color stimulus in this task were thought to hinder the potential color effects. In experiment3, we used Divergent Thinking test (DTT) to test the color effects. There is no difference between color conditions in Flexibility, Originality, Fluency, or the composite scores. No color effects on problem solving of DTT are found. This may due to the relatively short task period.In conclusion, the results of the main experiment of our study indicate significant color effects on creative imagery problem solving, namely, purple can enhance the originality of creative imagery task. The beneficial effect of purple on creative imagery performance may have two explanations.(1) It may result from the negative emotion induced by purple, while other colors may trigger positive emotions, which in turn hamper creative problem solving;(2) Given that creating is a process of breaking mind-sets, unfamiliar color can act as a priming cue to hint or stimulate us to think in a unusual way. As the most unfamiliar one among the six colors, purple can facilitate creativity. The rest two experiments provided valuable experience for future related research, that is, the length of creative task period and the size of color stimulus may separately or meanwhile influence color effects. Small color size and short task period may prevent color effects from being revealed. |
